How To Score More Waves At Pipeline Than Two World Champs

The Seven Mile Miracle is almost unbeatable when it comes to surf. Indo? Pfft. Ments? Beats that. It’s one of a kind and it’s a stretch of sand that offers up more premium quality waves than most of us will ever get the chance to ride in a lifetime.

The problem here, is that it’s also a stretch of sand, and ocean, with a whole lot of people. Like most stunning places in the world, it has become more and more crowded over the years. Even on a rubbish, onshore day, you’ll more than likely see 50-plus guys paddling around at Pipe. On a good day? You’re looking at a figure more towards the 200-plus side of things.

And, if you’ve been one of those 50, or 200 guys, then you’ll know – getting a wave ain’t easy. You’ve got to earn it, you’ve gotta put in a whole lot of time, you’ve gotta show respect – then, maybe, just maybe, you’ll get to pull in on a set wave.

For most guys, this is discouraging – hell, even some World Tour pros have trouble getting waves – but not for Jacob Willcox. At the start of this season, Jacob made it his goal to get as many waves as humanly possible over his two-week stint at Pipe.

What does that look like? That looks like going for three surfs every day, like paddling out when conditions don’t look hot, like dropping in on your teammates because you know they’ll be less furious than other surfers in the lineup (sorry, Wilko), like finding funky little lefts in the backwash from the real deal. That’s what it was about for Jacob Willcox.

And his tenacity paid off. By the time he left the rock, Jacob had surfed more waves, ridden for a longer distance, surfed faster and had more overall sessions than the entire Rip Curl team house. And that includes two World Champions, Gabriel Medina and Tyler Wright.

At the end of his Hawaiian stint, he surfed 355 waves, had 22 surfs, clocked his top speed in at 37.9km per hour and rode one wave for a massive 388.6m. We know this because, uh, the SearchGPS watch told us so. The only person who beat him by the time he left, in any way, was Matt Wilkinson, who surfed 45 waves in one single session – but that was probably just to prove a point after Jacob dropped in on him.

Taking into consideration that the North Shore is one of the hardest places in the world to get a wave (and he had some stiff competition with his teammates alone), those stats are rather impressive.

Now, what sort of stats can you rack up in two weeks on the North Shore? If you beat Jacob, just know, you’ve beaten World Champions…