The surf was pretty windy and crummy for a couple weeks, but boy did Santa bring some nice swells for Christmas. Christmas day offered solid 12 ft surf with occasional 15 and even 18 ft sets. Pipe started out kind of nuts that morning with such mean close outs, even the best boogies were getting lipped in the head. There was about an hour window which provided a couple sick ones before it began totally washing out. That swell dropped fast by the next day, but yesterday picked back up in the evening with some solid second reef sets at Pipe. It was warbly and backwashy until the last hour or so of light when some killer waves were ridden that were as good as anything we saw so far this season. The set up was good with long period swell making for some nice organized surf. This morning dropped a bit and was solid 6-8 with a couple 10 foot sets early and beautiful conditions. Anthony Walsh lead the charge for the moon surfing session which lasted almost an hour. The big yellow moon gleamed over Pipeline and it was beautiful, as were the conditions today.

People were speculating an Eddie Aikau event on the next swell which is expected to hit Sunday, but the contest site has officially called it off. Looks like the bulk of big swell will hit overnight like yesterdayʻs swell.

This season is showing a good pattern so far. Unlike the last couple years the swells are long period intervals and spread apart enough so that they are not overlapping each other. Thank God that weird La Nina is finally over. The Backdoor Shootout starts on the 4th and runs through the 16th, then the Volcom Pro kicks off Jan. 27th. I guess the Boogies will have their event mid February and the Girls sometime in March. The surf was so packed the last couple days, I cannot imagine how crowded it will be once all these contests get going. ugh. Oh well, all we can do is hope to catch a few waves in between it all. It is what it is.
photo: www.seandavey.com