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While everyone else was hitting that festive lull between Christmas and New Years, La Jolla local Skip McCullough spent eight hours navigating the biggest slabs Southern California has seen in a hot minute.
If there’s one thing you can guarantee when San Diego sees a larger than life swell, it’s that Skip McCullough will already be in the water when you finally find the courage to paddle out. And, in true character, 27-year-old McCullough was front and centre when things got incredibly big.
The 29th of December saw El Niño hit the West Coast hard, showing us just what winter has in store with some of the gnarliest waves Southern California has seen in a fat-moment.
“There’s been a lot of waves this winter as it’s an El Niño, but this was the first swell that everyone stood back and was like ‘alright this is it, this is the big one’, so there was a lot of hype behind it.
“The swell came on late in the day on Thursday, but it was massive. It was some of the biggest waves I’ve ever seen in San Diego. Friday started out kinda funky, but it had potential. I wanted to be the first guy out there.
“About an hour into the session the wind switched and it had the lightest tiniest whip of offshore, it turned into one of the most dreamy, magical sessions I’ve ever experienced in my hometown. The tide was perfect all day long and the wind never came up, so we just stayed out there and surfed for close to eight hours.”
Navigating the notoriously tricky slab has been a few years in the making, with Skip having embarked on his own college-sized course on the shifty break, “Probably two winters ago I finally mustered the courage to take off on one of these huge waves, and I got a big barrel. It ended up as a massive close out, but I looked at the video after and realised if the wave had done this, or I had done that, I would have just made it.”
“I got the video evidence that the wave was actually make-able, after that I just wanted to focus out there. I had that magic moment where I realised the wave was actually a good one, and worth spending the extra time to figure out.
“Fast forward to about a week ago, and we saw another giant perfect day. So I guess that session was a long time coming. It was the time to strike; that was the time to capitalise on what was going on. Those sessions don’t come around too often.”
After breaking his board into an equal three on his first wave, McCullough did a quick run-around home to grab the 6’6 Xanadu he’d initially planned to ride before picking the wrong board in the morning twilight; paddling back out pronto to get in on the 10ft+ barrels going unridden. Skip racked up the following hours working the reef break in front of a crowd wrapped up warm on the shoreline.
“I think as I’ve gotten older I’ve been able to recognise when those moments are happening and take advantage of what is going on to just get as many good waves as I can. I ended up walking away with four or five insane rides, good videos and good photos, and it’s a day I won’t soon forget.”
“The best part of it all was another swell hit the next day. Nobody even knows about that, and I think was even better. The hype had died down a bit and it was just a core group of local guys, we ended up scoring all day.
“It was two days in a row of as good as it gets California. The first day kind of ended up being a warm up, the second day was just taking candy from a baby.”
For God’s sake, someone pay this guy to surf already.
