Photo: Koa Rothman // YouTube
The latest video from Koa Rothman starts off with a trip to a spot you don’t see often in surfing videos: Las Vegas. He was in town for an event sponsored by Darc Sport, which not so long ago replaced the Quiksilver sticker that had taken up real estate on Rothman’s board for years. However, after the party was over, Rothman returned to his home shores of Hawai’i for a session at pumping Sunset.
“We had a couple fun swells recently, but this is real,” explained Koa as he drove to the beach. However, with the oncoming swell coming from the North, Pipe was not on the table. Rockpiles was an option, but, according to Rothman, John John Florence was the only person with the ability to make that wave work. What was left was Sunset, which was 12 foot and firing.
As always, though, there was a price to be paid for pumping surf. “I got exploded on a wave,” recounted Rothman after his second session of the swell. “Lip landed on my inside rail and I got thrown into the air, into the flats. Luckily, somehow, I just hit the water, went under and came out the back. I got really lucky.”
