This Is What It’s Like Playing Cat-and-Mouse With 20-Foot Cloudbreak
If you just scroll the curated highlight clips on Instagram after a big swell at Cloudbreak in Fiji, it almost looks easy. Watching Koa Rothman roll-in from out the back and stand tall through the inside slab, you might start to wonder: "Could I do that?"
Not so fast.
In the latest YouTube drop from Rothman, he shares the reality of playing cat-and-mouse on an XL day in Fiji. Those dreamy roll-ins? They aren't so dreamy after all. Riding one requires a commitment to sitting deep and inside, and missing one means getting steamrolled by a 20-foot set. Check the 4:40 mark to see what we mean.
"That was so brutal," Rothman recalls after a 5-hour session. "I got so barreled and also so caught inside on every set. We were trying to sit on the inside, and if you missed one of the frontrunners — the ones loading up and barreling on the reef — you were getting caught inside and pushed all the way in. Luckily Abe [Werner] on the Jet Ski was there to pick me up 12 times. I almost got a two wave hold down on the dry reef at shishkabobs."
Like we said, not so dreamy after all.
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