There’s a golden, universal rule that applies to all surf trips: never leave home when the surf is good.

Late yesterday afternoon, with Pipe 10-to-12, offshore, and about as good and dangerous as it’s been all season, Pancho Sullivan and Taylor Knox were busy piling their boards into Pancho’s utility, heading for the airport. They were leaving one rock for another, trading an abrupt and brutal peak for a long, stretched out piece of pointbreak toffee on a neighbouring island. It was a dice roll, sure, but Pancho was pretty adamant that the stars were aligning. With triggermen Shorty Buckley, Bali Strickland and Jon Frank joining Taylor and Panch, the twin props fired up on the tarmac at Honolulu Airport and they were off.

Pancho’s call was that it would be three foot at dark; the swell filling in all the following day. Arriving just before dusk with a crate of beers, Pancho’s call looked on the money. The boys sat on the iconic headland and stewed in their own anticipation. “It was small, so we just drank beers up on the point and watched the show,” recalls Shorty. “We were pretty optimistic that we were going to get surf the next day.” This wave is notoriously directional, notoriously unpredictable, but with Pipe at 12 feet, the six-hour lag time in the swell should have seen the point pulsing at sun-up the following day.

Dawn broke at three foot though, not six. The boys paddled out, along with three quarters of the island’s drop-knee booger population, and started to enjoy the long clean walls the place was renowned for. But six-foot it was not, and doubts soon surfaced. The boys out in the water – waiting 30 minutes between waves – were looking for a sign. They looked at the gnarled rockface of the cliff and saw outlines of turtles, horses, and Yoda. Nothing doing. But then they looked up to the clifftop, and they were suddenly blinded.

“We were swimming out there this morning,” recalls Frank, “and we saw this silhouette of this guy on the headland in a long sleeve cotton collared shirt, with cameras draped round his neck. The sun was shining behind him. It was an apparition. It was… Grambeau.”

When Ted Grambeau, master searcher, showed up unannounced on the headland, it was an omen. Grambeau was the Ancient Mariner’s albatross, with his puffy sleeves billowing in the wind. Surely, if Ted had materialised, the swell would come. “We thought that was the sign we were looking for. Ted was here.“

But as the day went on, the Grambeau albatross seemed to have been shot down with an arrow in the gizzards. The waves stayed six inches Hawaiian, three-to-four foot anywhere else. Questions were asked. Straws were clutched. “It was just every excuse in the book,” states Frank. “It was swell direction, it was tides, so there was all this bullshit talk saying it was going to get proper good, but we weren’t seeing it. Then we met this local guy, who, admittedly, was pretty clubbed. The local guru. We asked him what was going on and he said, ‘I’m going off to have a little nap, and when I wake up it’s going to be eight foot and pumping.’ Apparently this guy knows everything about the wave, and we’re thinking, you beauty, we’re going to get this last hour before dark, just epic. Well, the bloke must have been so stoned he never woke up, cause he never showed and neither did the swell.”

Mind you, Taylor and Pancho still scored some fun, long walls, better than anything you’re ever likely to find dished out at your local pointbreak. But considering the sublime treats this place is capable of dishing up, it was a little disappointing. “It was pretty close,” recalls Ted. “The light was beautiful and the swell was almost there. The swell that hit there last Tuesday fired up just before dusk out of nowhere, and that’s what everyone was talking about, so we thought everything was looking good.”

But with the sun getting heavy and the pungent waft of wowie in the air, the boys ran out of patience and bailed.
“Jon Frank took us on a two-hour tour of the island trying to find this taco joint he’d heard about,” moaned Bali Strickland.
Frank leaps to his defence. “I’ve never f*cken been there, and suddenly I’m the tour guide! And they’re blowing up when I can’t find the joint!”
The boys board their flight and return home. Pipe had got even bigger during the day, but had been wonky and windy with only a handful of guys taking it on pre-lunch. The guts dropped out of the swell after that, so all in all the boys roll of the dice hadn’t cost them too much.

With the North Pacific on the boil at the moment, there’s new systems presenting daily, and before Teddy had even got home he was scouring the buoys, planning another rock hop mid-next week. This one’s more than a 45-minute flight though, closer to four hours. And this place could potentially be so good, there’s even rumours a handful of guys in the Pipe Masters will fly down for a hit and run during the event’s contest window and hope to hell it doesn’t run while they’re away.

As Teddy says, “If you don’t swing the bat, you don’t hit the ball.” //SEAN DOHERTY

JESSI MILEY-DYER’S BLOG

What do you do when the most dominant female surfer of all time retires? You throw a party! Steph, Karina Petroni, Brooke Farris and myself hang around a bit with Layne so we were talking about what we’d do to “celebrate” Layne’s retirement.

Layne has been on tour for 18 years and if you look at photos of her from back when she started, she doesn’t even look like her – she’s changed so much, and gone through so many phases, from when she had long hair with a filthy comb-over to a bob with braces, and now she’s running dark hair and a fake Brazilian tan. So we decided to have a party where everyone dressed up as their favourite Layne – she’s such a big part of women’s surfing and been around for so long that everyone has a favourite Layne era. I used to have posters on my wall of her when I was grom so I came as “80s Layne”. I went to Wal-Mart and got the best high-waisted hibiscus shorts and the biggest swimmer bottoms – she used to wear them so high! She always wore blue, so I was completely colour co-ordinated, and had the hair flick and the Oakley sunnies. Steph had the radio headset from when she and Ken Bradshaw had the walkie-talkie thing going, with Kate Skarrat dressed us Ken, with the cardboard box head. Megan Abubo was pretty good. She accessorised with the protein powder and the little fluffy animal. Amee Donohue came as “tow-in Layne”, with the vest and blonde wig. It was pretty classic.

We’ve been partying pretty hard since Steph won the world title at Sunset on Monday. I’ve been really proud of Steph. She would never party at all when she first came on tour. She’d win events and she wouldn’t even go out, or she’d have one drink and disappear. But I’ve taken her under my wing and coached her a bit, and she’s been in pretty good form. We started the world title celebrations with a BBQ at Karina’s, then to Lei Lei’s, before ending up at the Bay Club at Turtle Bay. I don’t think Steph made it that far, which may or may not have been my doing.

We’re off to Maui on Sunday for the last event of the year. Although Steph has won the world title, it’s still probably the most important event of the year. Everyone is trying to climb the ratings and there are still points to be won and lost, so we’ll be back in competition mode pretty quickly. I’ve always done well at Maui so it’s an event I look forward to – I finished runner-up last year and won the event in 2006. I’m hoping to break into the top five and have been really happy with the way I’ve finished the year after injuring myself doing a floater at a ‘QS event on Phillip Island at the start of the year, bruising my tibia and damaging ligaments in my knee. I missed the Gold Coast event and almost didn’t go to Bells, so the year could have been a disaster. I’m just stoked to have survived. Making the final at Sunset was my best result for the year so now I’m hoping I can finish it off with an even better result on Maui.