I’d get stuck in this eddy and couldn’t get my head up and out of the water. I was getting smashed around in the rocks and the water would suck back. I took my leash off just before the wave hit me and got pushed through the rocks-boom, boom, boom. As I was trying to grab my board I turned around and saw a whitewash the size of a telephone pole. When I finally came up, my board and I were like 15 feet from the rocks that stick up and out of the water like 20 feet-just huge boulders of all shapes and sizes. But after a bad wipeout, I pulled my vest and got dragged like 50 yards in and toward the boulders that line the beach. We never looked at the wave from the beach we just looked at it from a panga from the outside so we didn’t know what it was doing on the inside. I went through the rocks full-blast and head first. 3.” However, when interviewing a guy like Nathan Fletcher-one of surfing’s most enigmatic figures-you just push record and hang on for the ride … When I initially sat down to speak with him, I meant to cover all the bases of the trip to Chile, which he was on for the filming of Vans’ “Get-N Classic Vol. The account below was related to me by Nathan after I asked him about a golf-ball-sized lump on his head I had seen in some photos (which you can view in the gallery above) from his trip to Chile for Vans. But even the best big-wave riders have wipeouts that make them question themselves and how their actions could affect family and friends. Hailing from a legendary surf family that traces its roots to the early pioneers of the sport, Nathan Fletcher is one of the most respected and talented big-wave surfers in the world.