“This is gonna’ be the best wave of my life.”
The Ocean Pacific has been alive with pleasure for multiple weeks now delighting surfers from Hawaii to California whilst terrifying beachfront homeowners. So much action. Nature’s gorgeous hammer. And any surfer, worth her salt, has certainly paddled into the XL and, likely, cosplayed as a Waimea or Jaws charger.
I certainly did, yesterday mid-morning, paddling out the front into what Surfline was calling 6 – 10 but it clearly being 20 – 30.
Oh yes, I was brave duck-diving those walls of water on my Album twin, jaw set, spinning on the first inside corner I could and getting an early score on the board but not as brave as the baby who was towed into a monster at Jaws dealing ageism a heavy blow.
The youngest person ever to catch one of the Maui beasts at 12-years-old, back in 2021, “Baby” Steve Roberson was towed into another, Wednesday, by the now legendary Billy Kemper.
“It was like a 40-foot back or maybe bigger,” Baby’s dad, Kaleo Roberson, told Hawaii News Now.
“I just saw this barrel coming and I knew I was like okay, here we go. I was like, this is gonna’ be the best wave of my life,” interjected Baby.
The beast, which initially looked like it was going to barrel, began to clamp forcing the extremely young man to straighten out and cop a heavy beating.
“It felt like I just got hit by a car or something right in my side and it put me into the water so fast and shot me up into the air and then I landed and got sucked over the falls,” he said.
After inflating his vest and getting bashed around a bit, Baby was rescued by a ski and declared, “The feeling like when I popped up is like a feeling like I’ve never had before. I just felt so alive and it was gnarly.”
I, for one, know how he felt-ish.
