Around The World In 80 Waves

It has been raining all day and it is pretty grim on the North shore so I decide to head over to the drier west side of the island to catch a great sunset and hopefully get a wave. Everybody said it would be flat but I’m game to have a look anyway. Makaha was Oahu’s first big wave spot as surfers moved out of Honolulu after the local waves got destroyed or change by development of the coast in the middle of the last century. They were charging twenty footers here long before Greg Noll charged at Waimea or Gerry Lopez owned Pipeline. It is a break I have wanted to surf since hearing Bear talk about surfing twenty foot waves alone there in Big Wednesday, which is my favourite film of all time. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hFH3q5bz1Q) It was written and directed by avid surfer John Milius who also wrote the screenplay for Apocalypse Now which is the reason for surfing appearing in that film too. (“This is Charlie’s break sir.” “Charlie don’t surf son”)

Now thankfully it isn’t twenty feet but is about waist high, super clean, there is no wind, the sun is shining and I have the break to myself. I cant believe my luck. I paddle out and straight away notice the rocks which are everywhere, but don’t dwell too much on it because every beach is like that here. I catch loads of fun little rides at a break which is quite possible the prettiest place I have ever surfed watched by tourists sunbathing on the beach. There is a full rainbow over the beach as I look back and scenery beyond that is stunning too.

Eventually a yound local bodyboarder comes out and tells me I am going to surf into the reef. Salient advice because the as I paddle for the next wave the reef sucks dry and I am faced with a massice rock in front of me with nowhere to go. I try to grab my board and pull it back but only succeed in getting my hand trapped between the advancing board and the rock splitting open an inch long deep cut on the back of my hand. Owwwwwww!! It bleeds quite profusely so rather than sit there effectively chumming the water and attracting the men in grey suits I get out with blood dripping off my arm. However it looks worse than it is, and thankfully my sister armed me with a quality first aid kit so I can just tape it up without having to attempt DIY stitches.

Regardless I head back to the hostel fully stoked to have bagged this legendary break and I am little proud of the scar I will have to prove it. I get back to find our chalet is where to find the party this evening, which is a great way to end my time on the North Shore. Sad to have to say goodbye to so many friends already, particularly the girls who have been such great company:

The swell has dropped again this morning so head to one of the Sorth Shore’s most reliable spots after checking out Sunset and Ehukai. It is another long paddle out and Laniakea works from knee high to triple overhead, but was only chest high today. I bag a hat full of waves and am havng a great time until a mental Japanese surfer stacks his longboard next to me. His board flies up in to the air and lands on my head! Having caught enough waves and successfully recreated the attack on Pearl Harbour I decide to get out for lunch.

I have been asked why dropping in is so bad. Apart from being extremely dangerous in big surf (Would you want me landing on you after jumping off a 10 foot wall standing on a surfboard with a sharp nose and several fins?) it is also bad manners. This is a gentleman’s guide to surfing etiquette:

This is a photo I found of Sunset online. The only relevance to my own session was the distance we had to paddle out to the break. I went with the girls, Kyle and my new room mate David from California. Kyle and Alexa sit this one out while the three of us paddle out to Sunset at sunset. Very excited because it is a legendary break, but also a bit dodgy. It is extremely rocky and I scrape my fins a couple of time just paddling out (note to self: try very hard not to fall off there!)

After the long paddle out we take up station in the line up and wait for waves. I would love to say this session was all rainbows, mermaids and dolphins but the reality is that it was dark, grey, very windy and bucketing down with rain. The sun was very much going down so it was getting dark, and there was not very much daylight left at all. I take one drop on the waves which were only chest high catch a rail and then stack it, thankfully without hitting anything. It is competitive and I see a few drop ins which in these conditions are crazy.

I look back at the land and can see that all the cars on the Kamehameha Highway now have their lights on, and am aware that fish feed at night including the ones with teeth so am just about to paddle in when either a seal or sea lion pops out of the water about 5 metres away. I cant say which because I was too busy having a heart attack to do a full anthropological study! The expletives I fill the air with from the shock of something breaking the surface scare it off and I am somewhat unsettled by the whole experience so decide to paddle in. At least I didn’t blank.

Solo mission first thing in the morning after waking at 4am again! Leave the chalet before everybody else is up. Paddle out after a chat with my security guard buddies who recommend it here. Swell is dying all the time and the wind switches to strong offshore so it becomes hard to paddle in to the waves. Long periods without waves as a consequence but still catch a hat full, including one for Peter Kraus who I’d spoken to the night before, and is also the person who I will be eternally grateful to for introducing me to surfing back in the early eighties. Yours was a peach Pete, a long snaking right. The only other thing to report was catching my first left of the trip, so good to get a backhand ride.

Head back to the backpackers where I pick up the girls and a Californian named Kyle. We all head off to Pupukea with a stop en route for me to purchase a Ukulele for my travels. I pick up this lovely number with the white trim. Tidy!

When we get to Pupukea the others go in, but I’m saving my energy for a session later in the day because I have already paddled for a few hours. I tune my uke and get some practise in until I am joined by this dog who doesnt seem to have an owner with him. After a stroke from me he runs off and brings back a coconut husk which he insists that I throw. 10 minutes of playing fetch later he decides it must be destryed which was when I took the picture. Once suitably trashed he left it and ambled down the beach

The other have a good time in the small surf and this shot is of Anna and Alexa on the same wave.

The swell at Ehukai has dropped considerably from the previous day’s competition but there are still a few rogue sets so I decide to head for Chun’s Reef, which is supposd to be a hotdogging wave and very much my style of surfing. This place is simply magical, there is a rainbow coming down on the peak with a pot of surfing gold underneath. However the rustiness I had feared on the previous session works its way out of me through this session instead. I paddle out the few hundred metres to the break with a handful of others just after the sun comes up but might just as well have introduced myself to them as Sir Dufus Kook. I have an absolute nightmare and am stacking every take off, and may have even perfected my ‘pearling’ technique where the front of my board jams into the wave on the way down the face so that I am proplled magnificiently through the air and then down on to the reef where the rest of the wave swiftly follows. My embarrassment is compounded by being in the water next to an absolutely stunning local girl who seems to be coping with the overhead surf rather better than I am.

The situation gets worse steadily as masive crowds arrive in the water. It is the weekend after all and everybody takes their boards to the beach just like at home. It is like surfer soup and super competitive and I am about to give up and paddle in without a surf, but then on my last wave of session I bag a beauty and snake along the face of the wave all the way in to the beach. Having been on so many naff trips in North Wales where it was onshore and howling a gale I have learned to be thrilled with just one wave (3 being a great session and anything more than that just being gravy on top) so am more than satisfied not to have blanked and leave the water on a high.

A bit of retail therapy and I check back into the Backpackers where I am sharing a chalet with surfers from Chile, Colombia, Romania, California, and the US midwest. It looks like a party crowd and I am here for three nights so there may be trouble ahead…

The North Shore is mobbed for the competition and also because it is the weekend so I can’t get a room for one night. I decide to sleep in the car and find a super sneaky spot to hide me and the car behind a cargo container in the car park of a church. It works a little too well and when I wake up and am desperate for the loo I have been locked in the car park! I have to rally drive over the grass verge to get out and am sure I’m going to hell, but the call of nature is strong. Without incident I get to Ehukai Beach Park where I know there are toilets and later chat to one of the security team who are guarding all the TV equipment, houses, etc associated with the competition. He is a massive local named Moses and I find out he is a year and a half out of jail for rolling a police car that he stole ten years ago, but appears to be sorting himself out. It is still only 5am and still dark and his buddies have failed to turn up so he has been out all night on his own. If I am willing to watch over the site for twenty minutes he will make me a coffee, which seems like a fair swap and I am left in charge for a while which was quite amusing. It was a lovely brew.

Eddie Aikau was the first official lifeguard at Waimea Bay, on Oahu’s North Shore, and at the same time developed a reputation as one of the best big wave riders in the world. Partnering with his younger brother Clyde, the pair never lost a life on their watch. Eddie surfed every major swell to come through the North Shore from 1967 to 1978. He won the 1977 Duke Kahanamoku Invitational Surfing Championship and in 1978 was among a selected few to join the cultural expedition of the Polynesian voyaging canoe Hokule’a, which set sail from Oahu bound for Tahiti. Hokule’a soon encountered treacherous seas outside the Hawaiian Islands and the canoe capsized. After a wild night adrift, Aikau set off on his paddleboard on March 17 in search of help for his stranded crew members. They were rescued but he was never seen again. The ensuing search for Aikau was the largest air-sea search in Hawaii history.

The Quiksilver In Memory of Eddie Aikau event was established in 1984 held at Sunset Beach in his honour. The byline for the event is that Eddie would Go because he would always be up for paddling out regardless of the size of the monster waves. The event moved the next winter to Waimea Bay and has been a fixture there ever since. The competition is invitation only and will only be staged on any given day during the three month waiting period (Dec-Feb) when waves exceed the 20-foot Hawaiian Scale, which for some reason only measures half the height at the back of a wave. That basically means the faces which will be surfed need to be a minimum of 50-foot high all day for the event to even take place.

I am really hoping to catch his while I am on the islands, but it certainly wont be the first year that the event doesn’t take place simply because the waves are not big enough. It is the absolute Zenith of competitive big wave surfing and well worth anybody checking out. I will keep you posted. :o)

http://quiksilverlive.com/eddieaikau/2013/

Head down to Ehukai to watch the final day of action in the Pipe Masters after the waves are confirmed suitable. Mick Fanning goes out early so it is a straight shoot out betweem Parko and Slater. Who will win the ASP world title and Pipe Masters crown?

It is like a zoo with thousands turning up from all over the island to see the competition. I see surfing legend Gerry Lopez in the car park at Pipeline signing books. “He’s as good as they say he is” is the blatant nod I will give towards his cameo role in Big Wednesday. I am not worthy…

I get to watch world class athletes and world class competition all day for free. The waves the guys are riding defy description. So big, so steep and so heavy really doesnt do them justice. I saw Kelly Slater get absolutely hammered twice by waves crashing down on him, before the third snapped his board in one of his earlier heats, but I also see him and a couple of others bag perfect 10s from the judges pulling into the biggest waves I have ever seen ridden. Not only doing that but taking the drops late, disappearing for 10 seconds and they flying out from inside of the spitting barrels just as you thought they had been minced. Awesome, just awesome. You can see footage here: http://vanstriplecrownofsurfing.com/billabongpipemasters2012/video-view/final-day-highlights-billabong-pipe-masters

Look what I find on the beach!

Kelly goes out to Josh Kerr in the semi final handing Parko the world crown because he has already advance further. A quick ceremony and a stomach full of champagne later Parko paddles out for the final, in which he adds the Pipe Master title to his world crown. Congrats to the fella who has come so close so often.

After getting scorched in the sun all day the girls and I decide to head over to Haliewa so Alexa can buy a board. After a successful shopping mission we find out that there is going to be a Xmas Parade through the town. It is great fun and goes on for over an hour. It gets me all festive as well as thinking of home. The girls treat me to a few beers to thank me for driving them around.

Get up early and enjoy putting a fresh coat of wax on the board. Decide to man up and a grow a pair so drink some ‘toughen up’ for breakfast so I can head for Pipeline having decided that I am indeed mentally ill enough and possibly good enough.

I meet two lovely surfer girls called Alexa and Anna whose home break is Vancouver Island in Canada who are also up for their first surf on the north shore. Like me they are used to surfing in thick wetsuits, so I don’t know who is more pleased by their being able to surf in bikinis, them or me.  I am in board shorts and a rash vest to stop me giving my chest weave an auto Brazilian on the hot wax. The water is gloriously warm and clear enough that you can see the large rocks you are surfing over.

It is my first surf on the North Shore, in the Pacific, and on a board I have never even got in the water before. Oh and I am paddling out 200m up the beach from Banzai Pipeline, so there is no chance of anything going wrong then! However I absolutely nail it from my first wave. There is a big fast drop down the face into the waves at the break I’m on which is known as Turkey Bay, massive bottom turn and then long snaking rights before leaping off so as not to get caught in the heavy shore break. I was expecting to be wobbly and a bit all over the show but it looks like this board and I were meant for each other. I’m shredding from my first ride. I cant believe I’m surfing the North Shore. I’m so stoked I could burst. A feeling that stays with me in the water as I catch a hatfull of waves over 4 hours. The wave are head high on the face maybe head and a half on the bigger sets towards the end of the day as the new swell arrives. The sun is shining, the water is warm and the girls and I are having a blast. I’m not even that bothered by my first Hawaian hold down which keeps me under water just long enough to be unomfortable after a big wipeout, as well as allowing me a closer look at the rocks I may end up getting bounced over.

Everything is good apart from one moment when I realise there is a big shadow coming up at me from under the water. I nearly soil myself only to see the one shadow turn into two massive turtles when they break the surface right next to me. They just want to say Aloha to welcome me to the islands and hang out with me for about five minutes, really having a good look at the British bloke on his new board before slowly but surely swimming off. Very cool.

I have waited over twenty years for this feeling and I am loving it. I’m just about as happy as I could be right now. 🙂