Big waves are nothing to play with. I learned that when I tried to go from 6 footers to 12, and 15-20 feet waves showed up in a killer set and wrecked me.

Though I’ve caught some amazing big waves before, the kind that are huge – 10+ feet and break slowly (so I can get out of the way), I’ve also caught some waves that thrashed the hell out of me and made me consider sun tans instead of surfing and bodyboarding.

Here are a couple of stories about how I almost died in Hawaii’s big waves…

My 2 Near Death Experiences in Hawaii’s Big Waves