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Its not a matter of if you will have a wipe out. For every surfer its a matter of when and how bad. Wangdu Hovey from Peahi Surf Media shares his worst wipe out ever with us.
READ MORE: About Wangdu Hovey and Peahi Surf Media
The day after the historic Mega Swell, my partner Micah Harris and I went out to Peahi, the conditions were epic, glassy and approachable but there was still some size.
I got into a nice sized left in the first twenty minutes and started feeling comfortable. I let my guard down and the next thing I knew a large set was rolling in. I was deep on the north peak and a little too far inside. I paddled vertical up the face of the wave, when I got to the top I felt it pulling me back like a waterfall, I threw my board to the side and relaxed as I as thrown backwards over the falls, I fell for what felt like 4-5 seconds landing deep in the water.
Panicked, I pulled my inflation chord and my buoyancy vest inflated giving me a sense of security, the underwater current pushed me towards the shore for a solid 30 seconds, when I came up, another large wave landed right on top of me as I corked up and down in the whitewater, than one whitewater ball after another hit me all the way to the rocks as I barely missed the worst part of the whole bay, the jagged point in the middle, luckily my board was still attached and I jumped on it and mustered my last 10 percent of entry to paddle to the East cove the” last resort”.
I was so happy to get to the shore, it took me 10 minutes to regain my composure enough just to walk back over the jagged rocks with my big wave board back to the main bay worst of all, my pregnant wife watched the whole episode from the cliff.