Last year in Hawaii I had a heavy wipeout at Rock Piles.

I had been surfing for a few hours having an absolute blast when I then came to realise that time had flown by and I was going to be late for a meeting. I then tried to catch the next set in, pressuring the situation.

When I caught the wave I didn’t see that the boil was right under me so I caught my edge and was pulled and smacked over the falls and thrown so deep to where my ears were popping. When I get in a situation like that I pretend I’m on a rollercoaster and think of happy things.

But when I came up my wipeout it wasn’t over.

I only had a quarter of my board and more waves coming so I had to focus on my breathing and being in the moment. After taking another two waves on the head I finally made out it into the channel.

As I looked to the inside of the lineup I saw the waves that I had been surfing closing out on the shallow jagged reef so I decided instead of putting myself in another sticky situation to take the long route so I swam around the lineup over to the inside of Logs.

I ended up having to swim for about 30 minutes but it definitely prevented me from possibly being injured.