Over the last 33 years, we’ve gotten pretty good at predicting big swells here at Surfline. Following ‘em from when they’re just wee blips on the models to full-blown purple blobs in the ocean to actual numbers on the buoys is almost as fun as actual surfing. Seriously. We love this stuff. At risk of sounding overly poetic, it’s the ever-changing ocean providing a beautiful, quantifiable narrative arc of wind over water creating waves that gets us excited.

But the best thing about these big swells — sorry, Forecast and Science teams — is the unpredictability of what happens when they actually hit the beach. Because, like anything, when you introduce the human element, all forecast tools are out the window.

Anthony Tashnick. Vid: Ben Ginsberg

For example: The models couldn’t have showed all captains refusing to head out of port at Pillar Point Harbor at 6am this morning, despite about 40 paying customers — filmers, surfers and spectators — waiting on the dock. LOLA couldn’t have predicted Anthony Tashnick and Kai Lenny ruling this morning’s tow session. Or Lenny’s aerial assault. Or Francisco Porcella attempting a floater on a PWC after towing Nic Von Rupp in from very deep. And the spectral buoy readings would’ve never said in a million years that Lenny was one of the first to paddle and shred at 10am, or that he was joined by a crew of other young Hawaiians, including Nathan Florence, Billy Kemper, Koa Rothman, Danny Fuller and Torrey Meister, who were in the lineup from dawn to dusk, bobbing around on a little boat in between making giant drops and/or taking serious beatings alongside a solid-and-growing local crew.

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Even years of firsthand experience covering swells here went out the window today. Normally, the parking lot at Pillar Point is full of big trucks and big boards and big-wave dudes walking from the lot down the long trail to paddle out. I usually intercept them on the way out or back and pester ‘em with questions about how it was or what their strategy would be.

Watch: Live Maverick’s Cam

Today, I saw only one surfer paddle off the beach all afternoon. Turns out, at this size, everyone opts for a PWC or a boat, which makes sense. Today, the cliff and the trail and the surrounding streets were packed with all manner of Bay Area curiosity seekers — many brought out due to an onslaught of mainstream “Swell of the Century” news coverage. There were teenage girls perched dangerously close to the cliff’s edge taking Instagram selfies. Outdoorsy parents with 4WD strollers. Crusty locals yelling out to anyone who’d listen, “You’ll never see anything like this again!” Elderly tourists rounding the corner of the cliff, squinting out past Sail Rock, and saying, “Huh, it’s not as big as I thought it was going to be” — until they realized that wasn’t a set, and those things in the water were not birds but jet-skis. Because when sets came, even from a few hundred yards away and looking through spray, glare and rocks, the crowd would utter a collective “Holy crap!”

Once I realized that my normal interception on the trail routine wasn’t going to work, I improvised. The launch ramp at dusk turned out to be a who’s who of big-wave surfers, photographers and filmers as skis made their way in from a long day’s work.

First, I cornered longtime Mav’s photog/safety person Frank Quirarte. “Kai Lenny won the day for sure,” he said. “He was murdering it. It wasn’t overly gigantic. It was hitting on the third reef, but it wasn’t focusing on the bowl till this afternoon, which is when the best paddle surfing happened.”

Kai Lenny. Vid: Ben Ginsberg

Nathan Florence, who snagged one of the day’s better waves, loaded up his giant board and said simply, “I had a few fun waves. It wasn’t a hundred feet, but still some huge ones. Everyone got fun waves and everyone came back in safe.”

View: Maverick’s Forecast

Torrey Meister, who popped his Maverick’s cherry today, said, “It’s like a huge slab but somehow a big wave. The place is beautiful and eerie and scary. The level you could go out there is crazy. Someone’s gonna pack a crazy left.” (At which point all the goofyfoots within earshot said, “Yeah, the left’s gonna get crowded this week.”)

On the other end of the spectrum, Skindog, who’s been surfing Mav’s for decades, came onto the launch ramp and says he’s going to hang it up. “It was 25-foot out there — and that was my retirement session,” he laughed. “Wives don’t like these kind of sessions. She’s like, ‘why don’t you go snowboarding instead?'”

Read: Updated Official Big Wave Tour Forecast

Nic Von Rupp had been here all week, snagged a few solid tow waves early and got beat by a solid paddle wave in the afternoon. “On my fourth wave we were trying to get deeper,” he said. “And I’m bottom turning and Francisco [Porcella] is on the bowl going sideways on the ski. I just went straight, and the thing landed on me and exploded me into the air. My wetsuit ripped open, I was holding on to the vest so it wouldn’t come off. I got smoked. Eventually, he picked me up, and that was the end of the tow session.”

After the sun went down, I headed to where everyone else was headed: the OPL. I found Twiggy and Grant Washburn in the corner. “It was very chunky,” Twig said. “There was a lot of water in the waves. It wasn’t as big as we thought, but it was the perfect size because we got chip-ins on the second reef and roll-throughs. Unfortunately, though, there was a light south wind all day, which made it really bumpy and scary to commit to one. It was similar in size to the 2010 swell, but that one was a lot cleaner.”

“We flew in the night before got maybe four hours of sleep and went down the the harbor at first light,’ Eli Olson said. “It was so big the boats were canceling charters and the boat I planned on going out on canceled last minute, so I was about to just paddle out from the beach and luckily caught a ride on a ski out there. I watched it for a little while, seeing what it was doing — and it was super big and ugly and not inviting at all but I flew over to get amongst [laughs].”

“I sat on the outside ledge, just inside of Twiggy and Pete Mel,” said Olson. “And when that set came, Twiggy caught the first one and I was in position for the second one, rolled into it and took my time bottom turning. I saw the wall and I was like, ‘if I go straight, I’m f++ked, and if I pull in I’m f++ked’ — but I just thought it would be so much sicker to pull in. So I went for it. And then thought I might be able to sneak out — and ended up getting completely axed and felt like I was hit by a car.”

Said Mav’s grandpa Grant Washburn: “There were some huge waves. But the south lump stayed bad. Gotta say, though, 15-20 years ago, there would’ve only been one or two people trying for those waves. Now, even though it’s taken longer than most of us thought it would, there’s dozens of guys charging. Their ability and confidence is super high. The equipment’s there, the training, the stoke, the passion. And the mindset guys like Kai Lenny bring to kiteboarding, foilboarding, and paddleboarding is kinda like the way tow surfing helped people figure out where they could ride on the waves and still survive.”

Oh, yeah: there’s more on the way this week.