Friday, December 29, 2023

I’m pretty dang happy right now. Today was by far the best session I’ve ever witnessed in San Diego. As you will see, it’s not the most organized or easy wave to read, but the potential for a session of this level has been in the making for a long time.

I want to send a huge thank you to Damien Hobgood who I’ve been shooting photos of here for nearly a decade. He used to paddle out in psycho conditions where no one thought it was possible, and it was borderline most of those days. His wave from the last El Niño in 2016 was seriously historic (Watch Surfing Magazine’s video: Just Up The Coast) and the same angle I shot that photo, is what I chose to film from today. He also helped babysit my daughter Koura this morning so I could shoot, and then helped line up our friend Kevin to continue babysitting all our kids when he paddled out.

I also want to thank Skip McCullough. La Jolla local and a core icon! You can tell he was waiting for the stars to align to show what he can do out there. Amazing performance. Someone pay this man!

What was originally supposed to be a short window of me filming this morning turned into 7:15am3pm on the sticks, zero food or water, dodging parking tickets, editing until the late hours of the next morning, and about to drive straight to Mammoth with my daughter and girlfriend on no sleep, just pure passion!

I hope you have the same enjoyment watching this footage as I did shooting it!

Surfers:
Skip McCullough
Damien Hobgood
Tosh Tudor
Balaram Stack
Kobe Hughes
Cliff Kapono
Duran Barr
Shea Perkins
Kyle Buthman
I’m sorry for the names I don’t know!