The Rarely Updated Blog of Nate Warner

Since my last post, we finally got to Tahiti, and got out on the water. The pictures in the post below were from Monday morning, with the wave setting up around 8-10′.

Teaupoo is deceiving because if everything goes according to plan, it looks soooo easy. Drop in, turn left, get the biggest barrel of your life and pop out the other side.

We got out on the water around 7 this morning. The focus of the morning was to get some barrel shots with the new rig, then worry about getting some free surfing shots.

The wave was setting up around 4-6′ with a few stand out sets rolling through. Raimana volunteered to go first, whipped in, and was looking golden until the opening started closing and the camera caught the underside of the lip throwing him off the board and over the falls. (picture in the gallery)

After a quick rescue by Jamie Sterling, and the thumbs up that Raimana was OK, we reloaded the camera and strapped it to Jamie O’Brien. With out hardly any waiting Jamie dropped in on the wave of the day, a super hollow 15 footer that spit him out right at the boat. Jamie Sterling dropped in with the camera and punched through another stand out wave.

Raimana was itching to get back on the board and record a stand up wave. After a long wait for a set, he dropped in and stomped the ride like a champ.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=6087&l=608e8&id=500088350

I decided it would be a good idea to get the blog rolling again to document my trip to Tahiti. I doubt anyone still reads this, but at least it will get syndicated into a Note on Facebook, which at least one person will read.

We are on a surf mission to Teahupo to work with a new type of camera. This trip has been in planning for a long time, but crystalized very suddenly. To get you upto speed, we have been working with a prototype backpack/camera system for our surfers to wear while towing into big waves and hopefully getting barreled. Since the surfer is acting more like a camera man than a shredder, we needed a wave that was big, hollow, allowed riders to drop in, and point it out the other side. Teahupu was the logical choice if we could get it on a big, but not huge day.

Once the design and location was finalized we had to wait for waves to hit.

Typicaly the Teahupu big wave season is coming to a close once October rolls around. We were getting a bit bummed that no waves had materialized, and started looking at the North Shore of Hawaii as a possible replacement. Luckily, word came on Thursday that Teahupo was lining up to be huge the following week. By huge I mean 12-14′ Hawaiian, which means the BACK of the wave measures 12-14 feet, the face is typically double that, aka 20-30 foot faces. In laymen’s terms, at the biggest baddest wave on earth, the wave that no one talks shit about, was about to go off. The two swells lining up to hit Monday/Wed/Friday were looking to be the biggest days of the year.

Update-
I just posted some of the action from Monday on Facebook. Check the link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=6014&l=32fda&id=500088350