Liam McNamara Raises Over $100K To Bring Back ‘Wave Of The Winter’
“This is not a private party, it’s an open door party. Everybody’s welcome.”
Kalani Chapman, Reef McIntosh, Ricardo dos Santos, Koa Rothman, Mikey O’Shaughnessy, Kelly Slater, Jamie O’Brien, Nathan Florence, Keito Matsuoka, Mark Healey, Eala Stewart.
The fact that an 11-time world champ and ten zero-time world champs can share the same accolade gives you a pretty good hint about which is the most democratic award in surfing.
Shortly after disconnecting its phone-in surf report service in 2009, Surfline formalized a title that had been unofficially conferred since the early days on the North Shore. Promoted by the spot-broadcasting giant and passed between sponsors — Hurley, Nike, Oakley, O’Neill, etc. — Wave of the Winter remained simple and straightforward for over a decade: get the one wave that makes every team house shout in unison at the ocean. And get paid.
Catching and successfully riding the wave that your friends, enemies, peers, and elders will unanimously call the best of a winter spanning portions of two Gregorian calendar years makes this an award that even the most decorated secretly yearn for.
Tomorrow, the North Shore’s resident and visiting elites will once again mine their gems and measure them against one another. And, in true island DIY fashion, one of Pipeline’s most infamous performers of the 80s and 90s, the Gath-and-short-john-clad Liam McNamara, is reinstating Wave of the Winter — with the help of Jeff Hall from Rogue TV and Jake Howard of Surfer Mag.
After nearly a five-year hiatus, Liam’s decided it’s time. “We saw a lot of great surfers win money over the years, and I loved seeing those Pipeline core lords earn money for getting those crazy waves,” he told Stab.
“When somebody gets an iconic wave on the North Shore — mostly at Pipeline, Backdoor, or Off the Wall — everyone talks about it, from the parking lot to Foodland,” Liam continued. “Back in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, there was no social media, and the best wave of the winter might not even get you a magazine cover because of industry politics.”
The North Shore can be so mythologized at times, it borders on self-parody: the Proving Grounds, the Seven-Mile Miracle (it’s more like eight, according to Liam), the arena where careers are made or broken, gladiators, lions, kittens. Yet the clichés persist because they remain true. Combine oceanic violence, volcanic reef, crowd density, and a level of local hostility that leaves no açaí bowl safe, and you have a setting where most will falter and only a few will shine.
Pipeline, Liam claims, is “the most famous and dangerous wave in the world,” and getting a ride out there that goes down in surfing history is anything but easy. “My entire career was made out there, but it also took a lot from me,” he recalls breaking his femurs and having his face smashed into the reef. “To see those guys getting paid again means a lot to me.”
For him, carrying the weight of the award is all about giving back. “A lot of surfers and companies have benefited from the Banzai Pipeline. If every surfer that made some money from Pipeline gave back a little bit, that’d be awesome.”
“About 30% of the reason Kelly is where he is is because of Pipeline,” Liam continued, “and 50% is because of the North Shore overall. The same goes for John John and down the list. The flipside is that someone like Damien Hardman, a world champion, isn’t even a topic of conversation. He never made a name for himself on the North Shore.”
So far, Liam’s fundraised roughly $100,000 from over 20 ‘small’ companies, each contributing in its own way: some with cash, others with gear. “I have not asked one corporate company to support this,” he said, though he’s respectfully reached out to past sponsors O’Neill and Surfline.
Last season, Eala Stewart won a parallel resurrection of WOTW, courtesy of Hawaiian accessories brand Blak Bear Surf Club, which wrote him a $10,000 check after an online vote pitted him against two other contenders: Shion Crawford and Koa Smith.
Liam’s efforts aim to keep the award running while giving it a much broader projection by escalating the stakes and prizes. “If the Eddie runs it will still be the biggest thing on the North Shore,” he admitted. “But other than that, this is the biggest thing to hit it.”
The grand prize will net a surfer $25,000 for the best single wave of the season, plus monthly awards. “The top three [monthly] places will be awarded cash. The top three cameramen will be awarded cash. Each month, there’ll be a minimum prize of $5,000 for the Wave of the Month.” There’s also a First Responder Award — an extra $5,000 for a wave ridden by those who spend their working hours keeping others alive. “These guys saved my kids’ lives. They saved my son last year.”
The waiting period begins December 1 and lasts 90 days, supported by an ambitious plan for a live, unfiltered, unscripted webcast where sponsors get their share of airtime. “The surfing world is going to see one of the raddest webcasts ever.”
Waves ridden from Haleiwa to Sunset are eligible. “Will it be a carve at Haleiwa? A 720 or a flip at Rocky Point? An iconic Sunset ride? Will Mason Ho come out of the barrel at Rock Pile and kickflip over a boulder?” Liam asks. Endless possibilities, it seems.
The first day of the waiting period could already deliver a classic Pipeline swell, “but we’re still trying to get some release waivers together, so we can’t go live on the 1st.” A wave ridden that day, however, could still win the grand prize.
Nathan Fletcher has been confirmed as a judge, with Liam currently finalizing details with Dave Wassel, Peter King, Brent Bielmann, and Kawai Lindo to potentially join the panel. The competing surfers will also have a say in who wins, as will the general public via some sort of online poll.
Pipeline local and winner of the award in 2017/’18 (long before he became the algorithm’s favorite son) Nathan Florence, emphasizes the permanence of the award’s cultural footprint. “The culture that was built around it is super strong. There’s still a super sharp focus on who has the current best ride on any given winter.”
His win came during the Da Hui Backdoor Shootout. “The statistics on that are insane. I think 75% of Wave of the Winter winners happened during the Shootout.”
Surprising, but also not. “They have a really good contest window, with all those Pipe specialists out in really good waves,” Nate says. “A lot of times the best ride will come out of those swells, even if it’s still only a window in a whole season.”
Fewer people in the lineup means better opportunity to pick and choose, but perhaps an uneven playing field — especially for those who don’t get a slot in the annual Pipe events.
“No waves caught in competition will be eligible to win the WOTW this year,” Liam says. “It’s freesurfing only, so that everyone has the same chances of winning.”
So what kind of wave is worthy of the title? Typically, not a “perfect” one. “It’s gotta be big, thick, and borderline unmakeable,” Nate says.
One such wave was attempted a few years back by Miguel Tudela. “He had one that we all remember and talk about often,” Nate says. “It’s notorious because he fell, but it was so gnarly.” He describes an abnormally sized wave that folded onto First Reef. “There was so much energy behind it, I don’t know where you could have been or what size board you’d need to be on. I can’t even believe he tried.”
Nate went on to theorize about the kind of waves that have been consistently and almost mundanely surfed in this day and age. “It’s become so normalized to go on waves that shouldn’t be ridden,” he said. “Sometimes at places like Pipe and Chopes there’s no entry point, but people will still go.”
An award like Wave of the Winter won’t dissuade surfers from going on the sketchiest, gnarliest water formations to hit the Hawaiian archipelago for the next three months, even if they’re unrideable. If Nathan’s gut impulse to waves like those is an indicator of how other surfers will react, we might be in for something extraordinary…
“Of course I’m going to go! It’s unrideable, so it’s super interesting.”
Here’s a wave Nate got just two days before the WOTW window officially opened. Let the games begin.
When asked who’s most likely to win the title in 2025, Nate was honest yet diplomatic.
“It’s so random, it’s a luck of the draw. But you have to think that with the tour starting in April, John and Barron will be there all season. They’ve gotta have pretty good odds. Then someone like Jamie gets any wave he wants out there. Behind him would be myself, Koa [Rothman], Eli, Ivan because of where we sit in the lineup and the hierarchy. Then there’s like 20 other really talented guys that are looking for Wave of the Winter style waves — like Eala Stewart or Kala Grace. They don’t catch as many waves but they go for the crazy waves.
No firm answers, but when you look at the list of former winners, you can understand why. Wave of the Winter is more about being in the right place at the right time than anything else. Hence that nauseating Pipeline chooses the winner cliche.
So, who’s gonna be on the button in winter ’25/’26?
And more importantly, will they press it?
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