“Death is a stone’s throw away” King of Pipeline Jamie O’Brien returns to wave that nearly killed him

“It’s hard not to take something like that seriously. You always wonder, when am I going to die? And then it almost happens."

Two years back now, surfing’s favourite redhead, the Pipeline charging Queen of Crazy Jamie O’Brien, was nearly killed while surfing a novelty wave at the Waimea Bay rivermouth. 

Do you remember? No, no, not the time in Waikiki where he turned his back on the ocean momentarily and a one-foot wave slammed him into a breakwall.

That time when the famous Waimea River had become swollen like never before following wild rains and locals had opened it up to create the biggest rivermouth waves ever seen.

Jamie tried to ride it only to be sucked out to sea and when he eventually returned he said he’d almost died.

“Gnarliest experience ever…I got sucked into the vortex of all vortexes!”

In today’s video, forty-one-year-old Jamie O’Brien, a man who’s life has taken a novelistic sweep, from skinny white bitch to corpulent ol man of the sea, returned to challenge his bête noire, and with much success.

“Absolutely insane. I can’t even believe it. That was probably the best river wave of my life. Just huge, big and glassy. I rode it for like three or four minutes. Like mind-blowing. I did not expect the river to get this big today. Amazing day on the North Shore.”