Surviving the Spit
By Jack Kittinger

“Spit! Welcome to Pipeline.” —Turtle, from the movie North Shore, 1987

Turtle’s words from the classic ’80s surf flick North Shore were in response to watching a grinding barrel puke a rider out of Backdoor. Nothing is more indicative of a wave going off than spitting barrels. Associated with big, hollow surf, the spit is a mesmerizing feature of the Hawaiian wavescape.

From a physics perspective, the reason for the spit is that the sequential collapse of the lip results in a physical forcing of the air, driven forward by the advancing foam ball. But the wave has to break with just the right conditions or it won’t happen—which isn’t as often as it may seem. The shape of the reef, wind, and swell direction all play a part and every wave is different.

One of the weirdest phenomenon associated with wave spit is what veteran Pipe rider Jamie O’Brien describes as the “flare,” where the barrel actually breathes inward before it blasts out. This happens when the wave shifts, usually occurring when the wave hits a particular part of the reef and causes the barrel to actually change shape or size. Flynn Novak describes it as a change in pressure, “Before it spits, it sucks in, and you get these droplets of spray like needles that sting your face,” explains Novak. “Then there’s a millisecond pause before it reverses and everything roars past you at 100 miles per hour.”

Both Jamie and Flynn say the big breath that the wave takes can be so intense it can stop you dead in your tracks, even if you’re going 20 or 30 miles per hour. “Sometimes I just grab
my rail,” says O’Brien, “because it can spit you backwards off
your board.”

“If you’re too far in front, you won’t feel it. If you feel it, you know you’re pretty deep—you’re in the belly. The suck-in gives you a sign that you need to be prepared for the reversal,” says Flynn, a man whose second nature is slotting himself in Pipeline’s sweet spot when it’s on.

In bigger surf, the elements are even stronger and more pressure can build inside the tube, warping the inside of the tube. And then time stops for a second—a second of nothingness, a second of uncertainty, then a combination of air, water and brutal force flies past. It’s this breath the wave takes and the resulting reversal that blows the rider out of the other end that makes getting spit out of the barrel the ultimate experience in surfing.