You’re gonna paddle into what?! The story of Jaws, Pe’ahi and Atom Blaster

In Riding Giants, Laird Hamilton (the tow-in surfing inventor along with Darrick Doerner and Buzzy Kerbox) recalls when Mr. Pipeline himself, Gerry Lopez sat him down and said: “Hey, young man, come over here, I’ve got something to show you.” And then the Jaws tune starts, and you know what is coming.

Jaws is located on the north coast of Maui in Hawai’i and can only be accessed by sea, and it’s not an easy ride for half a mile either. Peahi means to “beckon” in Hawaiian, and before it became Jaws it had another name” atom, blaster. Because, according to Gerry Lopez, when it broke it looked like an atomic bomb.

Jaws in surf history

Matt Warshaw writes about Jaws in The History of Surfing: “Jaws was marginally less terrifying (than Mavericks), just for being set in the tropics. It breaks less than Maverick, Waimea or Todos Santos, and the water surface can easily be turned into a meringue of whitecaps (I love this description) by Maui’s renowned valley-funnelled offshore winds. An entire winter season can pass without Jaws hitting peak form”.

But under the right conditions it produces a perfect, hollow wave, which even if miniaturized, would still also be absolutely spectacular.

Before tow-In

I am thinking that Darrick must’ve been talking about tow-in surfing rather than Jaws when he said: “We knew that we had discovered the real unridden realm.” Because Jaws wasn’t actually “unwridden”.

Before the North Shore crew of Laird, Darrick and Buzzy arrived, as early as late 80s and early 90s by a group of sailboarders including Mike Walz, Rush Randle, Mark and Josh Angulo, and Dave Kalama, charged Peahi. And yes, a sailboarder is just another name for a windsurfer.

How big can it get?

Until tow-in surfers visited Maui and Jaws no one actually knew how big it could get, because before tow-in surfing that size would not have been rideable. And there’s still a bit of a disconnect between surfers when talking about the size of Jaws.

According to Laird it’s five Waimeas, to Darrick, it’s 2 Waimeas but five times better, and Brian Keaulana, North Shore lifeguard and big wave surfer describes it as: “You take Makaha, Waimea, Sunset, Pipeline, Ka’ena Point, Mavericks, put ‘em all together and mix ‘em in a pot and that’s what you get and more.” Ok, so it’s really really big.

According to the EOS, Jaws begins to break only at 12 foot and doesn’t assume its perfect form until about 20 foot, which only happens a few times a year. Getting to 40 feet, it’s a rare occurrence. It was the first surf spot where a 35 foot wave was successfully ridden by Dave Kalama. It doesn’t seem like much with all the Nazares and all, but it was a massive deal in 1994.

Paddle vs tow

This is not when the history of Jaws ends. Quite the opposite! There were competitions for sure, and the first woman—Paige Alms—to charge the wave.

And in 2001, a world record-first obsessed South African surfer Chris Bertish paddled out into Jaws. Five years later, Mad Dogs from Brazil (Danilo Couto, Marcio Freire, and Yuri Soledade) repeated the feat. And by 2012 everyone and their cat were like tow-in surfing at Peahi is old news, it’s all about paddle-in surfing.

Should you be lucky enough to be on Maui when Jaws breaks, the best viewing, is from the Pe’ahi Overlook, located at the end of Hahana Road, a mostly unpaved road leading north from the highway between mile markers 13 and 14.

Author: The Wipeout Weekly team