Robby Swift and Jason Polakow are well known for radical windsurfing. As soon as a big swell hits Maui’s North Shore both are ready to enter the water. During the last Kona winds in Maui they pushed their personal limits at Lanes.

Robby Swift about the special day at Lanes: “Kona winds at Lanes with a big west swell create some of my favourite windsurfing conditions anywhere on the planet. These Kona winds at Lanes are a special phenomenon that happen only a couple of times a year. Last year we only had 2 sessions up there I think, and only one of them was very good, but it was probably the best session I have ever had with those kind of conditions. The swell was massive, but really west. I think it was about 20 feet up at Jaws but because it was so west, the West Maui Mountains and Molokai were blocking some of the force which meant that it was still sailable at Lanes.We didn’t have many days with these conditions this year but this day was one of my all time best days there because everything lined up so well. It was super hard to get out because of the massive waves and very strong current and hard to catch the waves because the wind was so offshore but once you made it out and onto the wave, the quality of the waves was just insane and I think I sailed for a total of about 6 hours that day. For the video it helped that all the best pro surfers on Maui were surfing at Ho’okipa, taking advantage of the offshore winds to do huge aerials and get barreled, so we had some of Maui’s top cinematographers at the beach lined up at various angles to film the surfing and windsurfing at the same time so I really enjoyed going through the footage from such amazing cameras located at such great angles.
After a couple of months of cross onshore port tack jumping in small waves, which I also love, don’t get me wrong, editing and watching this video makes me remember just what an amazing, dynamic and versatile sport windsurfing is. It’s a completely different feeling riding waves like that to jumping on a 3.4m in Pozo but the end result is the same, a massive adrenaline rush that you really can’t match in any other way and the older and more experienced you get, the more fun you have as you are able to take better and better advantage of the conditions and highly evolved equipment that we have nowadays.”

Robby Swift & Jason Polakow in Lanes

 

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