Watch: World’s Luckiest Surfer Clocks 180 Seconds Of Tube-Time At Empty, Perfect Kandui!

Two weeks ago we chatted with Anthony Fillingim, the Costa Rican kid who found himself “stranded” at Kandui Resort during their peak swell season with no one else around. 

If that run-on sentence overwhelmed you, imagine arriving at pumping, eight-foot Nokandui and there’s nobody in the water.

Are you: excited, terrified, anxious? Some combo of the three?

Whatever Anthony was feeling, he swallowed that shit and proceeded to wrangle freight-training tube after freight-training tube, plowing through foamballs with his bulletproof Stretch and laughing his way back to the lineup for his pick of the next set.

…For three days straight.

If a camera hadn’t been there to capture it, we’d have a hard time believing all of the above was true. It sounds something outta Barbarian Days, but better, and set in the 21st century.

But it is true, it did happen, and now you can see it with your own two eyes. 

Here are a few words from the director of this digital spectacle, the reverent Justis St. John, who copped a massive beating of his own on this swell (heal up, Jus!):

The one thing that kept going through my mind when I edited this is how much barrel time Anthony got in 3 days. It’s really unprecedented in my opinion. Just in this swell alone, I counted 180 seconds of barrel time in three days, and that’s not including the ones he didn’t make. Combining all the factors of: Kandui as good as it gets, no one out, and someone like Anthony just lucking into the entire situation, I’m convinced it will never happen again in our lives.

Kandui at that angle, that size, and neap tides is easily the heaviest wave in Indonesia. I’ve surfed and shot 10-foot Grower, Ulus, etc., and nothing compares to west Kandui on the end bowl. It’s as shallow as it gets but perfect as it gets. Stoked Anthony had a solid go—you find out really quick if someone wants waves like that, and it’s unheard of to rush it like that the first time. 

Anthony recently landed back in the Americas, where he will spend a month tube-detoxing in California before returning home to Costa Rica with enough surf stories to last 17 lifetimes.