The Gamble

Some swells announce themselves early. The weather charts in late 2018 were showing something that demanded attention, the kind of forecast that makes you book a flight and hope the ocean follows through. Fiji did more than follow through.

The conditions that day were far from ideal for photography. A tropical storm was moving through the island chain, rain coming in sideways, everything wet, no shelter from it if you wanted to be in position. I had a significant camera equipment repair bill after that trip. It was worth it.

Ramon Navarro and Kohl Christensen had been waiting in the boat for close to two hours, holding out for the wave that couldn't be paddled. Patient, cold, watching sets that others were already calling historic pass beneath them. When the bomb finally appeared on the horizon, the ocean simply opened up. Ramon dropped in, drove to the bottom and pulled into a barrel that spat with a force neither of them had seen before. He came out. Kelly Slater was waiting at the shoulder and paddled straight to him.

That evening, back at the hotel, Ramon saw the photographs for the first time and understood what he had ridden. Cloudbreak that day drew the best big wave surfers in the world to the same reef, tow and paddle alike, and delivered what many who were there consider one of the defining swells in the history of the break.