An Aerial View of Soli Bailey Scoring A Cloudbreak Masterpiece

A friend of mine recently revealed to me that Soli Bailey, the strapping and affable 29-year-old from Byron Bay, has long been one of his favorite surfers. And this was before footage from Soli’s barrel clinic in Maps to Nowhere and his Cloudbreak behemoth graced the internet this year.

The latter wave presents a splendid entry into the 2024 SURFER Big Wave Challenge. On March 2, 2024, Soli rolled away from the crowd and into a ludicrous and thundering left on the day of the year at the famed Fijian wave.

Related: Watch Soli Bailey Thread an XXL Cloudbreak Screamer

But first, a bit of background on our man Solomon Storm Bailey. He’s a well-rounded surfer and honed his competitive chops early on in Pro Junior and QS events and competed on the WSL Championship Tour for a year. But it’s when the surf gets cylindrical that Soli truly stands out. His landmark result came when he won the 2017 Volcom Pipe Pro in a final against Bruce Irons, Adriano de Souza and Griffin Colapinto.

But in recent years Soli has committed himself to riding the fine line between glory and disaster. He’s a frequent guest to off-the-grid reefs in Surfline and O’Neill’s Maps to Nowhere series. He’s kept many good clips on ice for his yet-to-be-published “Conehead” edit.

Which brings us back to Cloudbreak. This drone angle from Tucker Wooding looks dead on into the tube, where Soli sits for an absurd amount of time. As crazy as it looks to us, it was even crazier for Soli, who had a rare moment to truly absord the magnitude of the moment.

“That wave is scarred in my head,” he told Vaughan Blakey on Ain’t That Swell. “I was in there for so long, I was looking up at the lip going ‘Is this happening? Am I coming out of this?’ It was almost like I could have a cup of tea and look around. I was so in the moment and it was intense, but there was a second or two when I realized I was coming out and I just sat there.

“That wave will stick in my head forever.”