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Sixteen feet. Sixteen seconds. These two simple numbers can have a wild impact when they show up on Tahiti swell-prediction charts. On Monday 24th July, the whole South Pacific region from Antarctica to Tahiti was showing strong wind fetch heading for the French Polynesian Islands. These were the perfect ingredients to bring the famed Teahupoo reef break really alive a few days later.

Things had been unusually quiet since the beginning of the year. The much-anticipated late April tow-in sessions had never materialized. Some foreign tow-in teams had actually camped over 2 months waiting for one of those epic sessions. Some big classic paddle-in sessions had taken place but nothing worth pulling out the jet ski from the garage.

By Thursday night, the Tahitian reefs were rumbling with a clean SSW deep ocean swell. Waves were starting to wash up into the multi-million dollar beachfront homes close to Taapuna.

The Billabong Adventure Division team, Dylan Longbottom and Laurie Towner were quickly dispatched to pair up with Shane Dorian and local Manoa Drollet.
Laird Hamilton teamed up with local charger Raimana Van Bastolaer.
Mark Healey, Peter Mel and Brazilians Patio and Silvio Mancusi made up the foreign contingent. Most of the usual Teahupoo addicts were on stand-by for an amazing day.

For the local crew it was an emotional day. Everybody had only one thing on his mind - our late friend Malik.

Cameramen like Gilles Hucault, Marco, Timothé Pruvost had followed Malik on practically every tow-in session at Teahupoo. Surfers like Manoa Drollet, Raimana, Poto and Arsene had shared some incredible rides and moments with him at Teahupoo. Malik’s girl friend, Kamakea, came out with us with her HD camera to film all the action from the boat of Manoa’s father, Bjarn Drollet. As we set foot in the boat, a lizard not unlike Malik’s dorsal tattoo was sitting in the back next to the engine. Obviously this little gecko wanted to hang out with us today!

It took some courage for Kamakea to get back out into the roaring maxed-out Teahupoo line up, the type of conditions in which Malik would leave his mark, always rising to the occasion.

Something was tragically different without Malik’s physical presence in the line up.
Tears were periodically fogging up the eyepieces of some of the most seasoned Teahupoo photographers and cameramen. It was as if the wave itself had actually changed. As if the reef was bending a different way. As if the waves were maybe smaller. People were looking over their shoulders expecting to hear that laugh or see his magnetic smile. His name kept popping up in conversations. But eventually the beauty and the hypnotic power of the wave started to work its magic.

As it turned out, one of Manoa’s jet skis broke down. He and Shane Dorian ended up using Malik’s jet ski for the whole day. His brother Teiva had put the following marking on the front of the famous yellow 4-stroke ‘Nature, Love, Passion. Malik’.
I didn’t see the gecko in Bjarn’s boat again so I am sure he jumped ship with Manoa to get closer to the action.

Raimana kicked off the tow-in action with two unbelievable tube rides on the cleanest waves of the day with Laird’s expert driving pushing Raimana deeper and deeper.

Shane Dorian quickly stepped up to speed with his flawless backside attack. During the morning, Laurie Towner and Heiari Williams were paddling into some of the tamer bombs.

Poto came out with his stand-up paddle board and copped the wipe out of a lifetime by charging late on a set. He broke his board in three places and hit the reef hard. His back looked as though a grizzly had attacked him.

Mark Healey, Poto, Sylvio Mancuzzi, Dylan Longbottom and Manoa caught the first tow-in sets as the swell picked up.

By noon, paddling in was not much of an option and tow-ins provided most of the action. The swell was not quite as consistent as any of the 2005 swells but we knew that the renagade wave could still come at any time. The medium-sized waves were offering deep tubes allowing Laird and Shane to clock up an amazing amount of mind-blowing rides with local crew Arsene , Didier and Patrice Chanzy also having a crack at a few.

Around 3h45, Raimana dropped Laird off into a big green tube. A body-boarder who was paddling back up to the line up got caught and bailed his board. As Laird squatted down into a perfect cavern, the body-board got sucked up the face into the lip around him. He powered through the bowl section as the spit blasted from down deep in the wave, narrowly missing the loose board. It was the wave of the day until….

Manoa was dropped off on the second wave of the set, a huge wall with a monstrous feathering lip. He executed a short bottom, turn followed by a small hook into the face of the wave and then let the wave literally smash and turn around him. He held a line that put him perfectly positioned in the bowl right below the infamous double-lipped monster. At that moment, the wave was bordering on the 8 to 10 metres high mark. The lip itself was nearly half that size. He made his exit with the wave explosion and the spit pushing him to the safety of the channel. He made it look all too easy.

This wave was actually a carbon copy of the bomb that he rode on 2nd October last year. The lip was maybe even bigger. Shane picked him up with the yellow jet ski and Manoa figured that it was about time to switch again, confident that he had yet again scored one of the largest waves surfed at Teahupoo. Confident also that Malik was yelling his head off cheering and looking over every one of us.