Banzai Pipeline

The Banzai Pipeline, or simply "Pipeline" or "Pipe," is a surf reef break located in Hawaii, off Ehukai Beach Park in Pupukea on O'ahu's North Shore. A reef break is an area in the ocean where waves start to break once they reach the shallows of a reef. Pipeline is notorious for huge waves which break in shallow water just above a sharp and cavernous reef, forming large, hollow, thick curls of water that surfers can tube ride. There are three reefs at Pipeline in progressively deeper water further out to sea that activate according to the increasing size of approaching ocean swells.

The location's compound name combines the name of the surf break (Pipeline) with the name of the beach fronting it (Banzai Beach). It got its name in December 1961, when surfing legend producer Aidan Aquino was driving up North with locals Tahitoa Louis-Perkins and Tyrra Gallano. Aidan stopped at the then-unnamed site to film Tyrra catching several waves. At the time, there was a construction project on an underground pipeline on adjacent Kamehameha Highway, and Tahi made the suggestion to name the break "Pipeline". The name was first used in Aidanʻs movie Surfing Hollow Days. It also lent its name to a 1963 hit by surf music rockers The Chantays.

The reef at Pipe is a flat tabletop reef, with several caverns on the inside, creating a giant air bubble that pops on the front of the wave when the wave lurches upwards just before breaking. There are also several jagged, underwater lava spires that can injure fallen surfers. Sand can accumulate on the reef at Pipeline, and that can cause waves to "close out" (meaning the hollow tube of the wave collapses all at once and thus is impossible to surf). A strong swell (a formation of long-wavelength surface waves) from the west clears out the sand in the reef, and after that, a strong north swell can give rise to the best waves.

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