Mason Ho excels at Pipeline on any length of surfboard he chooses. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
There’s a reason why you don’t often see people surfing smaller surfboards at bigger Pipeline: because it’s super, super hard. Guns are guns for a reason. Step-ups are step-ups for a reason. A tiny little surfboard on a big wave means very late drops, and very late drops require a certain type of surfer to make them with any real consistency. A surfer like Mason Ho.
When Pipeline get big — like 12-foot faces big — a 5’6″ is not the surfboard that anyone is reaching for. Mason Ho isn’t anyone other than Mason Ho, though, so he did just that. And did he ever do that. As the day we’re talking about as an example progressed (below), the swell picked up. Mason adjusted with it, but didn’t change out the board he was riding. Instead, he just paddled harder and sat deeper. He’s built a little different than most. It’s hard to imagine being as comfortable at big Pipeline as Mason Ho is, but that’s why he’s him and we’re us.
Aside from wanting to feel a different kind of feeling, Mason decided to take this particular model out for a reason. As he put it, it was “to honor the rebirth of one of our favorite …Lost surfboard models the MINI DRIVER.”