Saturday, February 13, 2016

Winter

5 comments:

RONW said...

that's quite an outfit!

RONW said...

the Eddie is On.

8am start time, HST

http://quiksilver.com/surf/events/eddie-aikau/

40' faces, weather conditions favorable

blournalist said...

Thanks! You bet I'm watching. Weather is so crazy these days, this only seems fitting. 40-year swells? 52ยบ in VT today? The way things are going I wouldn't be shocked to see an Eddie next year, too!

RONW said...

the first 5½ heats (one hour each heat) went well for 8 heats, but after that the waves died down. Still good though. Actually watched the 8 hour contest on the Quicksilver website. Too much traffic to even think of riding up to the north shore. Oh, the way the sun direction is on the north shore somehow makes video resolution dark unfortunately.

blournalist said...

What a day! The Eddie is basically the ocean version of an obstacle course. The goal is to survive the drop and then get the hell out of the way before Waimea eats you. Amazing that Kelly Slater found a barrel for a second or two.

Mason Ho's incredible wipeout was horrific, but Clyde had the most terrifying spill of the day on his first run. I've never seen a gymnast cartwheel so fast. He flipped three times in the air before he even hit the water. Then it's in to the spin cycle. I could not believe that. A lot of guys took a big plunge, but I didn't see any of them flip around in the air as violently as Clyde. Next thing you see, he's waving off the tow and paddling back out on his own. More people in their 60's need to tune into this guy.

But the surfing itself is very athletic. No carves or anything fancy. Strictly just the challenge of trying to drop in on a powerful wave that sometimes decides to invert. I think the Eddie being a rare and special thing is the right way to go. It keeps the challenge in it. If Waimea was always going off like this and guys could master this sort of drop, the contest would lose a lot.

Really looking forward to some of the drone footage so we can see things more clearly, and I kind of hope this crazy weather takes another year to settle out so we can have one more Eddie before we get back to our regularly scheduled programming. There's so much leftover energy/spirit from this Eddie, some of it has got to spill over into next year.