Steph Gilmore back at Honolua Bay with world title No 7 in reach

A building swell is a beautiful thing. Modern-day forecasting adds to the drumbeat of anticipation.

Australian surfer Steph Gilmore is on the brink of a seventh world title that would match Layne Beachley’s record. Picture: Leilani Gryde

A building swell is a beautiful thing. Modern-day forecasting adds to the drumbeat of anticipation. You know what’s coming at a joint like this. Timeless walls of fluorescent blue-green water are about to whisk you on a magic (fibreglass) carpet ride, at breakneck speed, from the top of Honolua Bay down to the rocks made famous in Barbarian Days.

Stephanie Gilmore first surfed here as a teenager. She’s paddled over and beamed: “This is the best!”

She’s since become more at home than some of the dolphins. She returns to the northwestern coast of Maui today for the Beachwaver Pro and the type of multi-coloured landscape that makes a surfer, forever searching for god-knows-what, feel as if they’ve found somewhere to stay awhile.

The swell forecast yesterday made you want to pack a bag and jump on a plane and land at ­Kahului Airport at dawn. Gilmore, now 30, gets to be here for her day job. Nice gig.

There’s maybe half a dozen surf spots in the world that are ­legitimately breathtaking when the stars, winds and swell charts align, and Honolua Bay is one of them. A waxhead’s wonderland.

Building! The best word in surfing. Huey’s about to deliver. Swell is marching across the ocean while you sleep.

It’ll be falling in your lap in the morning. The forecast is for 10-foot sets as Gilmore begins her bid for a historic seventh world title today.

Six-time world surfing champion Stephanie Gilmore

The forecasts can be trusted in Hawaii. Trust us. Years ago at the Pipeline Masters, they’ve called the contest off on a Sunday. They’ve said the event will restart on the Thursday afternoon, when it will be 12-feet. On the Thursday morning, it’s been dead flat. You idiots! Hour by hour, though, right on cue, it’s built to 12-feet.

Challenging conditions are a godsend for Gilmore. It will allow and force her to forget the world title calculations. She’s basically unbeatable, but that can make you feel beatable.

Jaw-dropping conditions will allow her to focus on the tasks at hand. The testing paddle out. The positioning in a swirling line-up. The steepness of the takeoffs. The pace of shooting walls that curl like the banks of an Olympic velodrome.

A section of the wave called Cave gives the thickest barrels. Further down the line, Keiki Bowl is like a little racetrack. There will be less idle time for Gilmore to think about the end result, which may help her get the end result.

“The type of wave you can commit your life to,” writes William Finnegan in Barbarian Days, his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, from the rocks beneath the steps that take you up the cliff at Honolua Bay.

All Gilmore needs is commitment to a handful of heats and she’ll be having a very good Christmas. She’s the defending champion at Maui. She looks more at home here than the dolphins. Her only world title threat is American Lakey Peterson. Gilmore will be world champion if she reaches the semi-finals.

If she loses earlier, Peterson must win the event to force a surf-off. In other words, a surf-off is the worst Gilmore can do. It should be a walk in the park, if not on water, at the place where she clinched her first world title in 2007.

“I just remember being, like so confident,” Gilmore says of her first visit to one of her favourite places on the planet.

“From the beginning I thought, why would I want to aim to be in the top 10 when I just want to win? It just felt so natural to think yep, I want to go on the world tour. And I want to be the world champion.

“The world title race, to chase after my seventh, is unique ­because I’m chasing after a record Layne Beachley has held for many years. To have a battle with Lakey Peterson — it’s new territory because she’s fierce, she’s aggressive and she’s making me surf in a more aggressive way.

“This is a really cool year. Hopefully I get that big shiny ­trophy at the end.”