Albee Layer Had One Of The Scariest Sessions Of His Life Yesterday

When Albee Layer claims one of his scariest sessions, you perk up. “It’s so scary bro,” he tells Stab about this unruly left that he, Billy Kemper and Fransisco Porcello surfed in Maui yesterday. “It’s not even fun to surf,” he laughs, “there’s just that hope you’ll get one good one. Yesterday it was me, Billy and Francisco, then Matt [Meola] and Dege [O’Connell] were on the skis. It’s been so shitty over here, finally we’ve had waves this last week.”

http://vimeo.com/202167461

Yesterday, while watching from above, it looked manageable (a relative term). “It looked pretty fun,” continues Mr Layer. “We knew we were pushing it to paddle though. When we got out there I got a little wave to warm up, Billy and Francisco were out the back, this 15-foot wave came through and they both bailed and tried to swim through it; it was one of the scariest waves I’ve ever seen. It didn’t even break when they were swimming through and still sucked them back and over the falls, and threw them to the bottom. They were so rattled. Billy had a little padding on, but Francisco and I weren’t wearing flotation; we were tripping. It’s a tiny lineup and still was so easy to get caught inside.”

“We didn’t surf for that long, it was a little too big, you couldn’t paddle the sets and sitting on the inside for the medium ones was dangerous,” he says. And quite frankly, this clip and angle doesn’t highlight the sheer voracity of this wave. “The one I went on wasn’t the biggest by any means. I probably claimed it a little too hard,” he laughs. “But a lot of them were pinching; it was hard to find one that would stay open. And as soon as you caught a wave you were caught inside. Afterwards, we all agreed it was one of the scariest sessions any of us had ever had.”

Film and edit by David Gomez