I recently was on Maui, hoping to shoot epic Jaws. The swell didn’t exactly cooperate, but that hardly stopped Chuck Patterson, who decided he’d go water skiing — in 15-foot plus surf. I caught up with the man to see why:
So, I guess the obvious place to start is, what the hell? What are you doing? Skiiing at Jaws?
After three sessions on the custom wave skis in Northern California last year I felt that the best wave to really test the skis and how far we could push the limits, would have to be Peahi, better known as Jaws, the king of all big waves. Kind of like the Alaska of Extreme skiing. Like big mountain snow skiing, wave skiing really works best on bigger waves, where you can really do long carving drops and have a large wave face to work with that helps the skis keep their speed in the pocket. I have spent about 15 years tow surfing at Jaws and using   … Pictures & more