Photo: Nathan Florence // YouTube
The Florence brothers had only just left Pipeline, but already heard its siren song calling them back. The moment happened at the top of the latest video posted to the YouTube channel of Nathan Florence. With the North Shore winter season coming to a close, Florence and his retinue recently departed from Hawai’i, secure in the knowledge that they’d extracted all the value they could from Pipeline this year. Instead, they would venture abroad, continuing their ongoing quest to squeeze more online content out of the the far-flung reaches of the globe. However, just as soon as they did, they got wind of a swell heading straight for home.
Which led them to the scene at the top of the video – of Nathan, Ivan and Zoard fretting over the fact that, even though they had spent all winter surfing Pipe, they were going to miss out on another swell. Eventually, Nathan laid down the law: they would stay where they were, in Chile, and have another run at the fearsome slab known as “The Thing.”
The decision to spit in the face of FOMO turned out to be the right one. Their return to The Thing was rewarded with the kind of experience that only comes from venturing far from home.
“In the end we both got some great waves, Ivan with a crazy one,” summarized Nathan afterwards. “This wave, the bodyboarders told us hasn’t been paddled by standup guys. So I’m guessing Ivan probably holds the best standup paddle wave here right now. Because it’s only been us, this trip.”
