Press play on the above video, and you won’t be able to take your eyes or ears off it for the next 15 minutes. There you go, you’ve been warned. It’s an excerpt from Talon Clemow’s Thundercloud, which traces the history of Cloudbreak, arguably the best wave in the world, up until the historic freesurf session that interrupted the Fiji Pro in June of 2012. The film won Best Documentary at the 2014 Surfer Poll awards, but the fascinating in-depth interviews are accompanied by ample footage of the wave itself; highlights here include Ryan Hipwood’s impossibly perfect barrel in 2011, which he paddled into on a 6’10, and Laurie Towner’s even more ludicrous attempt to paddle the monster swell of 2010 on a 6’8. It did not go well.
More Thundercloud excerpts here (Mick Fanning’s 2012 XXL wipeout) and here (more footage from the June 2012 swell).
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