Albee Layer Has One of His Scariest Surfs Ever

It’s a well known fact that Albee Layer isn’t easily shaken. The Maui local frequently paddles into some of the heaviest waves in the world and pulls in at Jaws at pretty much any size, but this wave, he reckons, is much scarier.

“It’s so scary bro,” he told Stab of the paddle session, which Albee undertook a few days ago in Maui, along side Billy Kemper and Fransisco Porcello. “It’s not even fun to surf,” he continues, “there’s just that hope you’ll get one good one”

You couldn’t paddle the sets and sitting on the inside for the medium ones was dangerous

Albee and the boys reckoned it looked just about manageable when they checked it from the top, but maybe they didn’t watch for quite long enough. “We knew we were pushing it to paddle” he explains  “When we got out there I got a little wave to warm up, Billy and Francisco were out the back, this 15-foot wave came through and they both bailed and tried to swim through it; it was one of the scariest waves I’ve ever seen. It didn’t even break when they were swimming through and still sucked them back and over the falls, and threw them to the bottom. They were so rattled. Billy had a little padding on, but Francisco and I weren’t wearing flotation; we were tripping. It’s a tiny lineup and still was so easy to get caught inside.”

“We didn’t surf for that long, it was a little too big, you couldn’t paddle the sets and sitting on the inside for the medium ones was dangerous,” he says. “The one I went on wasn’t the biggest by any means. I probably claimed it a little too hard, but a lot of them were pinching; it was hard to find one that would stay open. And as soon as you caught a wave you were caught inside. Afterwards, we all agreed it was one of the scariest sessions any of us had ever had.”