Mrs. Pipeline

At the end of a trail off Ke Nui Road—between the old Volcom house and the old Gerry house—a particularly friendly and well-fed cat aptly named Smokey plops down on the bench next to me. Presumably more attention-starved than starved-starved, he sits as the two of us stare out at the Banzai Pipeline, a small late-season swell stuttering on the horizon, sending chest-high lines onto the shallow reef.

I can sense Moana Jones Wong approaching from behind the bench. She is bronzed and fit from surfing. She smiles bashfully and holds out her hand, looking both at and around me at the building swell—a talent (or malfunction) only surfers have when speaking to someone whose back is turned to the sea.

Smokey scooches over to make room for her and the three of us stare at the blindingly bright water. Clearly, Moana sees Pipeline differently than most of us. Surfers like her, who’ve forsaken every other wave on the coast to devote themselves to it, understand Pipeline uniquely: where to sit, where to line up, which ones to go on, which ones to not.

She proved this type of connection in 2022, catching a dozen or so proper Pipe bombs in the Backdoor Shootout—waves that’d feather on Second Reef, giving the 23-year-old North Shore native enough room to throw her hands above her head, Uncle Derek style, before being blown out into the channel. Her performance earned her a wildcard slot into the WCT Billabong Pro—which she’d go on to win quite handily, smoking multiple world champions and assorted World Tour vets. Thing is, she’d wholly given up on pro surfing just a few years prior. What’s Pacino say? Just when I thought I was out… With that win at Pipeline, she began the 2022 season as the world No. 1.

Smokey yawns while a random ripper hides himself inside a Backdoor right that grows on the inside. The surfer scratches back out into the lineup furiously, very aware of this late-season fortune, and turns on a left, crouching into another head-high tube. Watching, Moana seems to be increasingly antsy, noting that she needs a surf to train for the inaugural WQS contest at Ala Moana Bowls—another event she’ll go on to win. As the swell continues to rise, the newly dubbed “Mrs. Pipeline” stays put long enough to explain what it’s like to be cripplingly shy while simultaneously excelling at the world’s most examined wave.