This story is part of the March 16 edition of Good Weekend.See all 14 stories.
Pipeline, the famed surf break on the North Shore of O’ahu, in Hawaii, is one of the world’s most dangerous waves. Swells march vast distances through deep water in the North Pacific, collecting energy as they go, before colliding at speed with a series of shallow reefs off Ehukai Beach. The reefs are made of limestone, formed tens of thousands of years ago, that are as hard as concrete, riven with caves and underwater canyons and studded in parts with coral heads that “stick up”, as filmmaker Bruce Brown put it, like “overgrown railroad spikes”. Wiping out here can be lethal: a surfer might get caught in a cave, knocked unconscious on the reef, or drown under the weight of the whitewater. The crowd further …