I was feeling my oats a little bit that fateful morning. A recent string of sessions at OB had me pumped and overly confident. When we walked down to the bluffs to check it, we knew it was going to be big because all night you could hear the crashing. A crescendo like that was indicative of macking waves, and we were not going to be disappointed. Waves were coming in sets of ten - sometimes fifteen - and they were coming hard. After a few seasons of big OB winters I was used to seeing size, but it was hard to judge just how big these behemoths were from the bird's eye perspective on top of the cliffs. Of course we were going to try it. One word: G-N-A-R-L-Y. Normally the waves break way inside of the guardian rocks on the southernmost tip of the bay. This was not normal. Instead waves were hammering the rocks straight on, the energy refracting and reorganizing until it broke again on the outer sand bars. A huge river-like current was running through a gap between the giant rocks. This seemed to be the only legitimate chance of making it out, any thought of paddling out from the middle of the beach was a joke, unless you had a pa'anga and timed it just right. Undaunted, one friend leaped on his board and shallow stroked his way into the outgoing branch of the tidal river, and within ten or fifteen seconds he was sucked straight out through the gap between the rocks. That left two of us still wading up to our chests jumping over occasional white water chunks. Well, it was now or never. I am on my pathetically incapable 7'6 fun shape and my other friend is on a board that immediately qualifies as an "old school" board because of its yellow, sun-bleached discoloration plus the fact that it was a single fin, very thick and very narrow on the nose. Not exactly guns. Five minutes into our attempted shooting of the gap in between the big rocks we are being bombarded by set after never-ending set of crumbling white water balls, we are both duck-diving and not sprint paddling afterwards because we can't see where to even go for, and we don't want to get sucked into the pit. "Let's hunker down here!" He yells.

That is a term I have never heard used during my experience surfing until that moment, and I don't plan on hearing it again anytime soon. That plan was flawed, as we were getting pushed closer and closer into the kelp and barnacle covered outer guardian rock. I made up mind and sprinted after each duck dive away from the rock and pointed my board in the direction of where I thought outside was located. About five minutes later I am alone, a bit tired from the sprint paddles and duck dives, so I decide to sit on my board for a breather in a place that looked like it was outside the impact zone. Turing my head I searched the beach for signs of my companions. I saw nothing but humongous crumbling walls of blue and white. Looking out to sea I thought to myself: 'That can't be?' It was.

ER Harris