Kelly Slater And Cloudbreak Make Beautiful Music Together, Again
Warning: simplexml_load_file(http://api.facebook.com/restserver.php?method=links.getStats&urls=https://surfingworld.com.au/kelly-slater-cloudbreak-music/): Failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request in /home/u302805883/domains/surfingworld.com.au/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tk-social-share/tk-social-counter.php on line 65
Warning: simplexml_load_file(): I/O warning : failed to load external entity "http://api.facebook.com/restserver.php?method=links.getStats&urls=https://surfingworld.com.au/kelly-slater-cloudbreak-music/" in /home/u302805883/domains/surfingworld.com.au/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tk-social-share/tk-social-counter.php on line 65
Warning: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /home/u302805883/domains/surfingworld.com.au/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tk-social-share/tk-social-counter.php on line 126
Warning: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /home/u302805883/domains/surfingworld.com.au/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tk-social-share/tk-social-counter.php on line 126
Warning: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /home/u302805883/domains/surfingworld.com.au/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tk-social-share/tk-social-counter.php on line 126
Warning: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /home/u302805883/domains/surfingworld.com.au/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tk-social-share/tk-social-counter.php on line 126
Warning: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /home/u302805883/domains/surfingworld.com.au/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tk-social-share/tk-social-counter.php on line 126
Warning: file_get_contents(http://www.linkedin.com/countserv/count/share?url=https://surfingworld.com.au/kelly-slater-cloudbreak-music/&format=json): Failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found in /home/u302805883/domains/surfingworld.com.au/public_html/wp-content/plugins/tk-social-share/tk-social-counter.php on line 145
Share
I was a last minute ring in. Taj had a boat in Fiji, a giant super yacht, and someone couldn’t go. Riley Blakeway was on the trip filming Taj and it was through Riley that I got the call up to join in on the awesomeness. One minute I was sitting at home with no plans, probably eating a sandwich, and a phone call later I’m in the middle of the Pacific on this floating palace.
The super-yacht was the craziest thing I’d ever seen, by far the best boat I’d been on to this day. Everyone had their own rooms with double beds and at any hour of the day you could have a chef making you cocktails or a bartender making you fresh sashimi, or the other way around.
It was my first trip to Fiji so I didn’t really know what I was in for but the boys on the boat knew that swell was on the way. Kelly wasn’t part of our trip, he was staying on Tavarua. The first surf at Cloudbreak wasn’t that good. It was onshore, four foot, bad winds and Kelly was out there. We swapped boards and I had a few waves on one of his, which was pretty cool.
It wasn’t until a couple of days later things went offshore and the swell hit eight feet. I was trying to figure out the line-up, it’s such a huge expanse of reef that the whole thing had me baffled, but Kelly was so comfortable. He knew what to do and when to do it.
Not once did he look threatened or out of position. He was telling me which waves to go. I went one that I never would have gone if he hadn’t said to. It was a bigger one that looked a bit funny and I was apprehensive, really tripping on going it, but Kelly was right, it was an incredible wave. He knows every little in and out of that entire reef, every swell direction, which wave will open and which will run off. All the nuances of that place. He probably knows every fish by name.
There wasn’t a single wave of Kelly’s that really stood out but his entire performance, his game at Cloudbreak, that was what made it the best surfing I have ever seen. He was doing wild backside snaps into the pit and weaving through caverns with no hands, all style and swagger. He can be a bit strange sometimes but he was so jacked on the surf that it was like we were all visiting his house and he was hosting a party. Riley and photographer John Respondek were shooting from a helicopter and they got some of the most mental footage and photos I’d seen in a long while.
“Kelly was timeless that day. His timing, his comfort in waves of that size, the lines that he painted.”
I think Kelly was already on quads at that stage. They seemed pretty normal, maybe a little shorter. He checked out my board which was way wrong for Cloudbreak that day and he was tripping out, saying, “How are you riding that thing dude? It’s like a fun small wave board.”
I thought, “Oh cool, I feel super confident now.” That was a pretty standard Kelly convo I think. Like that or you’d say a normal line-up comment like, “How was that last one?” And he’d reply with exactly how it was, every single detail of the wave, where he positioned himself, what he was thinking, how he adjusted, what he thinks about GMO pesticides in Hawaii. Everything. And you listen to every single thing he says because it’s Kelly at Cloudbreak! That’s like Michael Jordan talking to you about basketball, or even better, Michael Jordan talking to you about Space Jam! I loved surfing with Kelly out there, it pushed me so much. I don’t think I’ve had waves as nice and as big and as perfect as that since. It was so fun. I’d die to go back and surf it again. I feel like I’d be a lot better now that I know it a bit.
But Kelly was timeless that day. His timing, his comfort in waves of that size, the lines that he painted out there, it’s the pinnacle of surfing. The pinnacle of anything I’ve seen, really. It was cool to see.