Yesterday they held The Quicksilver In Memory of Eddie Aikau big wave contest at Waimea Bay on the north shore of Oahu. I took some photos. This is a pure distraction diary....
Waimea Shorebreak
Judging Stand
There was a lot of hype over the huge swell that had been forcast to hit the islands early this week. Monday was huge but stormy and bumpy so they waited for better conditions on Tuesday. Thousands of people showed up to view the event.
Peter Mel in the first heat of the first round.
The contest organizer invited 28 of the best big wave surfers on earth (and some alternates). The contest is run differently that most surfing events which are elimination events. The surfers are divided into four groups of seven surfers and each group gets surfs in two - one hour heats. Each wave is scored from 0 to 100 points and each surfers scored is based on their best four waves of the day.
Sunny Garcia make a huge drop. CORRECTION this is Garrett McNamara.
Kelly Slater pulls into a giant tube. He did not come out of this one. He later made a big drop and managed to ride the whitewater across the bay and connected with the reformed shorebreak wave and went back left on the nasty thick shorepound (a trick pulled off in the last Eddie five years ago by winner Bruce Irons). He scored 98 points and led the contest all day.
Slater setting up for the shorebreak.
Shorebreak
There were lots of epic wipeouts. I believe this is Keone Downing almost landing on Bruce Irons.
The crowd was epic as well.
Peter Mel and Mark Healey. In the middle of the contest there were some long lulls between waves and the size was faltering. It almost seemed like it was a mistake to run the contest but the organizers had seen the data from the offshore buoys and knew more was coming. The waves got bigger and more consistent throughout the afternoon.
Kelly Slater attempting to pull into another tube, a rare event at Waimea. He got hammered.
Andy Irons does an imitation of his brothers move and connects to the inside shorebreak so he can take a beating for the benefit of the screaming crowd.
Later SL8R does it again. Here is his final bailout before his beating.
The late afternoon surf got positively gigantic. Here is Sunny Garcia on a massive wall. His total score suffered because his earlier heat was run during the worst lull of the contest. He still managed third place due to some high scores in the second heat.
The wipeout of the day had to be young Hawaii surfer Kohl Christensen's air drop and crash. Wow.
In the last heat Californian Greg Long dropped into this monster wave and got 100 points from the judges to overtake Kelly Slater and win the $50,000 grand prize.
It is always special when they run the Eddie. I was glad to be there to witness it. I hope you have enjoyed this way off topic diary.
Aloha and as always, please be good humans.