Caught inside! First set of the day.

Empty perfection.

Speed wall.

Chayne, dropping into the slot.

Adam "Waka" Williams making the drop...

...and the bottom turn look easy.

Waka on another Coconuts wall.

The crew on deck.

As tropical cyclone Waka headed further south the weather softened and brightened, and within a couple of days we were seeing beautiful blue sky and breathtaking sunsets. And then the swell arrived.

The resort's head manager, Wayne, knew the swell was going to be hitting and he woke us at 5:30 am to get ready for the boat trip to an outer reef break called Coconuts. We woke to clean six foot closeouts out front where the evening before there had been two-to-three foot junk. We were all stoked to see that the cyclone swell had arrived as planned and we all got our equipment ready. That is, except for me. I unzipped my board bag to find that all three of my surfboards had been crushed beyond repair - completely snapped in two! I couldn't believe it. The airlines had ignored the FRAGILE stickers on the bag and had placed it under a thousand pounds of luggage until they all snapped. Luckily, Wayne and Brent, the managers at the resort, were more than understanding and lent me their backup boards for my entire stay. We readied our equipment, loaded up the van, and headed to the harbor.

When we arrived at Coconuts the surf looked good from the boat, but it was hard to discern the size of the waves because there was no one out in the lineup! It looked to be smaller than we had hoped. Boy were we wrong! After paddling the 100 yards out to the break we realized the waves were standing up to a height of six to eight and occasionally ten feet on the face before pitching over into a barrel and crashing over the shallow reef.

Over the following three days we got stuffed into and shoved out of more overhead barrels than we could count. The most people we ever counted out in the lineup, besides ourselves? Three. We were in heaven! It's very difficult to convey the difference between surfing good waves with fifty wave-hungry jerks surrounding you (the norm in California), versus surfing good waves with just a handful of your friends in the water. In a word, "agitation vs. euphoria". And boy were we euphoric. We were hooting and hollering when the big sets came through, pushing each other deeper into the pit, screaming for each others' tube rides and laughing at each others' unfortunate falls. Between sets, stylish tuberiding and hellish wipeouts were the most common topics of conversation.

On second thought...better not!

Waka Williams, cool in the eye of the storm.

In there...

And out again!

Aaron Hennings, Art Director for Billabong
USA, getting ready to whip a bottom turn.

One of the Aussie brothers setting it up...

...and pulling in.

The Aussies, keeping the tan alive.