Chasing Chalk: Biggest Barrel of my Life

My Aussie cousin was banging on about some big wave blogger the other day, but I was too busy sledging him about the impending destruction of the Aussie cricket team(?!) and didn’t pay full attention, until now. Chasing Chalk has been getting plenty of coverage in the Aussie media the last few days, and if you take a look at the sequence below, you’ll see why. If you’re wondering why it’s called Chasing Chalk, the story goes that Chalk himself has broken so many bones his mates reckon they’ve turned to Chalk.

Check out his latest entry then follow the link to one of the most gnarly big wave sequence shots out there…

I had been out for 6 hours before I got this wave. It had been really slow all day and I hadn’t had any good ones yet. Then this mountain came roaring out from the horizon I got tingles (goose bumps) all over as soon as I saw it. I looked up at Hippo (Ryan Hipwood) who was on the jet ski and he didn’t even smile he just said “this things huge.”

I didn’t really even think, I just yelled out to Hippo go go! I’ll go behind him! Hippo just took off. We were coming into the wave from left to right and Rawlin’s and his driver were coming straight in behind the wave. It put me on the inside and i thought I would just try and pull into the barrel behind Mitch and we’d both get barreled and make it out. Ive done this before a couple of times but on way smaller waves. Hippo was yelling out to them go go go!

It actually wasn’t my turn when this wave came. It was Mitch Rawlin’s go. He’s the craziest lid rider i’ve ever surfed with. He’s ridden the biggest waves at this break I have ever seen. His partner started towing him in. They took a more straight on line into the wave coming from directly behind to avoid the bumps you hit if you come across from the left.

To see the rest of this sequence, get over to CHASING CHALK.