Keala Kennelly has caught one of the heaviest Teahupoo bombs ever by a female surfer. The veteran surfer from Kauai followed an XXL swell hitting Tahiti and scored the wave of a lifetime.
The massive waves were detonating onto the dry reef. Keala waited for her turn, for her wave. Raimana Van Bastolaer took a break and let her borrow his ski and driver.
Immediately after being whipped into the bomb of the session, she knew what she had in her hands.
"I passed on a much smaller one that had some chop on the face, and when I saw that one standing up, I knew it was going to be a bomb, so I was like, 'Okay, this is it... This one is for you, Salope,'" explained Keala Kennelly.
"Salope is a nickname I call a dear friend of mine who is battling Stage 4 cancer."
"I let go of the rope, and I dropped down into it. I had to come into it real straight on because when it sucks below sea level, it creates this trench that you don't want to come at sideways because you can catch a rail, so I had to come down real straight, and then once I got through that trench I bottom turned up into the barrel and stuck my line."
"I felt like I had a good line and was pretty determined to make it out of the barrel, and right then the wave turned mutant, the West bowl bent at a 45-degree angle back at me right as the bottom of the wave dropped out, and it swallowed me whole. I got a pretty serious beat down," concluded Kennelly.
It was a serious beatdown. The Hawaiian got smashed down onto the reef, pinned on her back, and held there for a while.
Then she came up and got a breath just in time to get the wave behind it on the head.
"That one slammed me on the reef with a lot of force. The whole left side of my body hit really hard. It felt like I broke my elbow and my hand."
"At first, I couldn't move my hand, but after a while, I started to be able to wiggle my fingers, so that was a good sign. by then, I had washed into the lagoon, and the jet ski came and got me."
Keala Kennelly wanted more, but she was bleeding and in a lot of pain.
When she got back to the boat, her friend Brent Bielmann claimed it was the heaviest wave ever experienced by a female surfer.