Soli Bailey Pays The Greenbush Tax

Soli Bailey is batting 1000. 

In a decade of boat trips to Greenbush, he’s 4-4 on both stand-tall pits and brutal lashings. From quick smacks to nearly blowing his back apart and losing his nipple, he’s become all too familiar with the notorious Mentawai reef. 

It goes to show that a career spent inside of waves (see: Maps to Nowhere, Cloudbreak and a bounty of secret hollow cubbies) doesn’t come without leaving a few pounds of flesh. As it was to pay the reef tax, Soli claims those early sessions in the Ments set the foundation for what his career would become.

In addition to the slams, there’s a steaming platter of roping Greenbush in Soli’s retrospective piece posted above. Most of it comes from footage captured 10 years ago on his very first trip. As Soli notes, the swell was so big that the left looked more like a South Australian slab than yet another perfectly groomed Indo reef. An incredulous 20-year-old Soli got to channel Bruce and Andy by practicing no-hands-bottom turns into wide-open tunnels. Ironically, it was the second day (smaller and more stretched out) that got him in trouble. “This whole section went before I got to it,” Soli recalled. “And it was like someone had opened a door to the reef. There was no gravity at all.”

Hit play above to see the damage report. Then, go watch Soli and a slew of Aussies (plus Cam Richards) in BIIIG, featuring an astounding number of proper Greenbush tubes and deleted Bintangs.