If Pipe has at times been a tease, then the ASP has been positively cruel. On the first Saturday afternoon of the waiting period Pipe roared into life, producing perhaps the best surf the North Shore has seen so far this season. It was wild and unwieldy, but the potential for entertainment was huge.

The problem was that the contest had been called off for the day, the surf having been deemed “uncontestable”, and so the remaining competitors joined an assortment of Pipe locals and travelling pros in the water for a free-surf session instead. If the decision not to run heats seemed bizarre, the low scores that predominated in Round 2 that morning put it into some sort of context, and it should be noted that the surf changed significantly following the call. Mick Fanning said his freesurf consisted largely of a fifteen-wave set barring his reentrance to the line-up, and arguably the free-for-all format provided a better spectacle than heats would have done.

We have already pointed you in the direction of Matt Warshaw’s Beachgrit take on events; now see what “uncontestable” looks like in the above video courtesy of Surfing Magazine.

Here’s another angle of the same session from someone who can’t spell “strangely”.