Pipeline's Holiday Gifts: Punishing Beatings & Second Reef Cleanup Sets 

There are a dozen noteworthy waves here from the likes of Nate, John Florence, Makana Pang, Balaram Stack, Barron Mamiya, Lucas Godfrey, Shayden Pacarro and more. But there’s one set in particular that has been making the rounds online. It comes in the form of a massive cleanup set straight from the outer reefs. Dozens felt its wrath. Mother Nature’s reset button pushed most of the lineup toward sand. Nathan, who spent five hours surfing, breaking a leash and swam in twice to get only two waves, copped the brunt of it.  

As the avalanche arrived, Nathan attempted a valiant duckdive only to get spat out into the whitewater and sent spinning underwater from the second reef nearly to the sand, almost 300 yards by his estimate. You can catch his GoPro angle from the session here.

Though Nathan is skilled and savvy enough to swim in on his own power, he got an assist from Florence’s newest tech — the AeroShield. It’s an impact suit in a refined package. Nathan wore it during his march to the Vans Pipe Masters win. As Florence puts it, “With thick but porous neoprene, the goal with this suit was to deliver protection and some buoyancy without the drag and lack of mobility apparent in traditional padded impact suits.” 

As Nathan explained, the idea was to minimize the drag and bulk the extra foam without compromising buoyancy. “The flotation (is) kind of mind-blowing that we could remove the pads and get a suit to this level of buoyancy and look like you’re in a normal spring suit,” he said. “We tested it and it was maybe 10-15% less buoyant than a fully padded suit. I’m talking where you look like Robocop.”

New faces, new gear, the same great theater. At Pipeline, the show goes on.