The North Shore Cops A Flogging...20th Jan.

The Islands are still very much in the grip of the big swell that hit a few days ago. It's holding steady with all reefs including the outer reefs going off. Pipe and all places (except Waimea Bay occasionally) are basically unrideable. There are a few die hards that are having a crack at Waimea but it ain't pretty out there I can tell you. As I was hoping a few days ago, the winds are slowly swinging around and maybe tomorrow (Monday) we will start seeing some cleaning up of everything with some offshore breezes and the camera will get a run again. At least by Tuesday I should be back into it seriously with any luck.
Dave Wasell and others have been called over to California for the Mavericks comp a couple of days ago, so this swell is eating up the entire Northern Pacific at the moment, I just hope it stays around and all indications are that it's not going to drop under about 10 feet for at least the next week, which is absolute perfect Pipe size so stay posted and see what happens.

I have just been down the beach for a while again and witnessed yet again another pack of unwitting tourists get nailed by a big clean up sneaker set. They were just laying around sunning themselves and up it came, cleaning up all in it's unrelenting and unstoppable path......then all the squeeling and sobbing starts.....wet and shell shocked bodies looking around themselves wondering what the hell just hit them and all the belongings floating back down the beach on the way out to the Pipe reef.
 Just standing there looking up the beach towards Sunset, I could see all the shiny glistening things like cell phones, cameras, wallets and purses etc, towels, clothes, and whatever else going back out with the set. It's funny and sad at the same time seeing this happen time and time again here, but it is quite an amazing thing to witness. Mother nature at work in a very spectacular way  You know what they say...."never turn your back on the ocean"

Above.....You wouldn't even want to guess what's going on here, you also wouldn't be able to get a word in sideways is my guess! What's the one on the right doing.....she's not even facing anyone, just talking to her hand . This one is from a couple of days ago. You can click on any of the photos in this blog to enlarge.

Balaram Stack dropping down the face in a sequence of a nice Pipe run into the beach with a bit of scraping the ceiling on the way, this was taken on one of the crossed up days in the early part of this swell.