Gallery: The Best Images From Pipeline Valentine
Photographic highlights from four days on the North Shore
Flynn Novak. Photo: Jeremiah Klein
Marcus Sanders
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As mentioned more than a few times already, we’ve seen some amazing images and videos from the Pipeline Valentine swell along the North Shore. We reported on it in realtime right here. We have three days of cam highlights from Pipeline right here. We nominated a Photo of the Swell right here. This was not a giant, Waimea/Outer Reef swell (though there were a couple moments on Saturday), but Pipeline and Backdoor took center stage and had moments of sheer brilliance, as showcased in the photo gallery below. (Stay tuned for some outstanding O’Neill Wave of the Winter as well. Oh, and fair warning: basically everyone in the below photos is going straight. There are no turns.)
Helmet credited with saving pro surferâs life after nasty wipeout
Helmet credited with saving pro surferâs life after nasty wipeout By Mark Carpenter | February 15, 2021 at 5:41 PM HST - Updated February 16 at 8:44 AM
HONOLULU, Hawaii (HawaiiNewsNow) - Veteran professional surfer Mikey OâShaughnessy is no stranger to navigating some of the worldâs biggest waves.
But sometimes, even the pros run into trouble.
OâShaughnessy is recovering at an Oahu hospital after hitting his head on the reef at Pipeline following a brutal wipeout in high-surf advisory conditions.
Fellow pro Billy Kemper saw the incident unfold and was among the many to bring him ashore.
Injury At Pipeline: Mikey “Redd” O’Shaughnessy
Former Wave of the Winter winner hits the reef at Backdoor
Marcus Sanders
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Sunday morning, Pipeline was all diamonds and rainbows and unicorns. Guys and gals getting the waves of their lives, crazy eight- to 12 foot bright blue tubes across the world’s most famous stretch of reef. A light seabreeze came up around 1pm, ruffling the lineup a bit but the swell was strong enough to offer some reasonably clean peaks.
Around 1:30pm, a solid set came through. Zeke Lau grabbed the first wave at Backdoor. Mikey “Redd” O’Shaughnessy 2016 Wave of the Winter winner, who had already snagged a few solid pits over the morning paddled for the second wave of the set. Dropped in a bit late. The outside edge of his board caught and he ended up falling flat on his back, right at the apex of the reef at Backdoor. Redd went over the falls and hit the reef with his head and was knocked unconscious and held unde
Staff
There are few surfboards that cause a massive stir in the surfing world. The Hypto comes to mind immediately, of course, but so does John John Florence’s Ghost model. Shaped by Jon Pyzel, of course, it’s the board that makes everyone think they might just
might be able to surf a little more like John John. That’s not possible, but the Ghost sure does suit John’s surfing just about perfectly. It wouldn’t, though, if it weren’t for the dusty hands of Pyzel.
He’s a shaping legend, as you well know. He makes shapes that sit under the feet of John John Florence, Nathan Florence, Koa Rothman, and Mark Healey, just to name a few. Pyzel, a California native, grew up in Santa Barbara but made the move to Hawaii in 1992. He started off as a lowly ding-repair guy at Country Surfboards, then moved on to hot coating and laminating. There, he met Jeff Bushman, who decided to throw him a bone and give him a job as a back-shaper. From there, it was on.