Jason Momoa Rescued At Sea By Laird Hamilton

Jason Momoa has long been a certified dude in our eyes, but his recent appearance on the Smartless pod (his first foray into the format, no less) took said dudeism into the stratosphere.

Momoa’s Polynesian roots are no secret — proof of which can be found abundantly within his new Apple TV show God of War — but those of us less familiar with his life story mightn’t have know how deep his surf roots travel as well. For starters, Buffalo Keaulana, aka the Mayor Of Makaha, is his great uncle, he landed his first big acting role after he was spotted folding T-shirts in his family’s Hawaiian surf shop, and he’s also towed Jaws(!?).

However, the real kicker from this hour-long chat, which is well worth your time If you’ve got a tedious commute/drive/chore ahead of you, is a little offshore paddle outing Jason had with Strapped Crew royalty David Kalama and Laird Hamilton. Not wanting to spoil the whole yarn, as Jason’s booming baritone spins it far better than we can paraphrase here (starting at 17:30 above), the gist of it is that the boys are seven miles into a 14-mile paddle, over a mile offshore, and, it being Maui, was windy and rippy as hell. Jason’s leash snapped, the wind took his craft and blew it into the abyss. His fellow paddlers were out of sight, and the big man panicked. To the point of admitting that he genuinely thought that his end was nigh.

However, he also forgot who he was paddling with. He was with Laird. After resigning himself to Davey Jones’ locker, suddenly, out of the abyss, Laird Hamilton appeared, with Jason’s board, which he’d had to paddle after, retrieve, push back whilst paddling his own craft, against the notorious Maui wind and current. Eventually getting the big man back onto something that floated a lot better than he did. Screen Aquaman then eventually returned to land humbled, yet unbowed, just another in a long line of ocean-goers to owe their life to our real life Aquaman.

Never forget, there’s surfers, watermen even, and then there’s Laird.