Around The World In 80 Waves

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. 🙂

I bought a local surf guide to talk me through the local breaks. When deciding where to get in the water today I spotted this about breaks off Makaha. I’m so glad they told me she is friendly!

I have hired the worst car in the world for my stint on Oahu. It has no power and has the turning circle of a small planet, but I am letting it off because it is a Chevvy Malibu and a Malibu board is what I have surfed most of my life.

After being woken by the wild roosters running around the garden I take it for a spin to check out all the surf spots and see what king of boards the islands can offer me. However there are surprisingly few surf shops on the north shore. I have only seen two which actually sell boards or even wax! It is like trying to buy surf supplies in North Wales back in the Eighties.

Whatever I do end up buying will be my trusty chariot for most of this trip so it is important I get something I like and that suits my style of surfing. Several years ago I bought in haste what I call my ‘rebound board’ after snapping the Williams longboard I had surfed for over a decade. I have never liked the rebound board and even now rarely take it out. In many ways it is like a dance partner and some are just better suited to one another than others.

Historically I have always surfed a bigger board, not least to ensure it is bouyant enough to keep me afloat, but because it is also suited to my style of surfing. However anybody who has tried to move a surfboard without a car of their own (as I will have to do freqeuntly on this trip) will tell you the longer it is the more ungainly it is and at times it is just a painful experience. I remember crossing London at rush hour once with a board under my arm. Never again. As a consequence what I buy will be a compromise between portability and surfability. Buy a performance shortboard which is nimble but unstable like a rowing boat or a cruisy longboard which is very stable but hard to turn like an oil tanker. The bigger the board also needs bigger fins to control the turning and they are not always suited to the reef breaks which I will be trying to surf along the way. Decisions, decisions, decisions!!! So many to choose from, but a board from the islands is a necessary souvenir of this trip.

After a lengthy chat with Bruce at Surf N Sea in Haliewa I opt for this stick that is known as a Strive Bully board. It’s dimensions are 7’10” x 22½” x 3″ with a swallow tail and it has very funky concave grooves on the deck by both rails which supposedly add strength for extreme aerial manouevres (not that they are that likely with me riding it.)

Like the stoy of my love life it is not necessarily the prettiest thing in the shop window, but will guarantee me a great ride, and we are going to have lots of fun together while it lasts, even if it is ultimtely not what I want long term. The sophisticated ones with the best legs and styling were a little out of my price range and I failed to talk them down to my level. However I will make sure she is not neglected whilst in my company regardless of all the above and I will make every effort to get her wet every day on this trip.

I think that is about as far as I should push my double entendres don’t you. ;o) I do however need a nick name for it and would welcome suggestions.

The science of waves breaking is quite straight forward. Each wavelength has a crest (the top) and a trough (the bottom), which happily travel across the sea together at the same speed until the trough is slowed down by the friction of moving against the bottom of the sea. At this point the crest of the wave is unaffected and overtakes the trough which we see as the wave breaking. The extent to which the top of the wave overtakes the bottom generating what is known as a lip is dependent on the size of the wave and the severity with which the trough is slowed down by the sea floor.  There are three types of breaking wave:

1. Beach Break – exactly what you might imagine. The waves break when they are slowed down by the seashore regardless of what that shore consists of. E.g. sand, rock, vegetation.
2. Point Break – no bank robbing or FBI involved here just something sticking out into the water like a jetty or pier or most frequently the cliffs at the side of a bay. The water breaks on the shallow water by the point and then peels off toward the water adjacent to it on the left or right.
3. Reef Break – typically a coral reef but hardy souls such as myself are more used to rock shelves in the colder waters of the northern hemisphere. However reefs can also be man-made such as a shipwreck or the artificial reefs that have been installed at a few locations around the planet specifically to make wave break in a predictable manner.

Pipeline, and much of the rest of Hawaii’s waves are such extreme waves because they have travelled across thousands of miles of very deep water, building in scale and speed, until very abruptly the trough is dramatically slowed down by the bathymetry (or shape of the sea floor) upon contact with the islands. All the Hawaiian islands have been created by molten lava escaping from the earth’s core cooling straight away in the waters of the Pacific only to be immediately covered by the molten lava that is behind it in the fissures escaping from the earth. Over time this process has happened so abruptly that the highest mountain on Hawaii would actually be taller than Mount Everest if it was measured from the sea floor rather than sea level. This sudden change in the water depth from deep ocean to shoreline is compounded by the coral reefs and as a consequence you get seriously thick lips to waves as the crest is pitched forward. Good surfers are capable of riding waves in the space that is created underneath (known as catching a tube), but great surfers can practically live in it.

The pipe masters is the last event on this year’s ASP (Association of Surfing Professionals) World Tour and after tough competition in the events that have taken place on all the globe’s prime surf locations it will decide the three horse race between Joel Parkinson, Kelly Slater or Mick Fanning to be crowned the 2012 World Champion. I should probably tell some of you that the wave is known as Banzai Pipeline because it is basically a suicide wave that I am not sure I will ever be good enough/mentally ill enough to ride. Waves 20 feet high break over water that is only a foot deep between the surface and the razor sharp coral underneath. People die surfing it, so not for the faint hearted. That it breaks so close to the shore allows spectacular pictures such as this, and enthusiastic amateurs like myself a unique opportunity to see the professionals at work at close range. You can watch it live if you like. (http://vanstriplecrownofsurfing.com/billabongpipemasters2012) I will do my best to get on screen.

Anyway enough science it is about time this surf trip involved some surfing, so I’m off to buy a board.

Hawaii is where people first started surfing, and is somewhere I have wanted to visit since watching Magnum PI and Hawaii 5-0 back in the day. I pay particular attention to the safety briefing on this 6 hour flight because the destination islands are only the twice the size of London inside the M25 and the next nearest land is over 2000 miles away. I’m sure that there will not be any issues but I realise how stuffed I would be in the event of any problems.

Thankfully there are none and after picking up a hire car in Honolulu I drive to the hostel I am staying in which is 200m from Waimea Bay on the North Shore of Oahu. I realise quickly that it would probably have been a good idea to have some idea of the US highway code, but apart from one chicken run with another car when leaving the car park all is good.

The surfers reading this will know how significant the waves are on the North Shore, and again how big Waimea is compared to everything else along that shore. For everybody else’s benefit it can be HUGE!!!!!!

I have scored a great room for a few days so that I can find my feet on the islands without having to travel far to see the surf and surfing competitions on offer. In the hostel you can ordinarily feel the ground shaking as every wave crashes onto the shoreline, however it is actually flat when I arrive. The big swell arrives on Friday – 😛

My mother will be delighted to know that there is no chance I’m paddling out here for my first wave in months so I head along the road to Pipeline to check out the Pipe Masters contest going on there but it is sadly also flat there. and the contest is off. Later in the week though, maybe, once there is a swell running and I have warmed up a bit…

Time to settle into my new home so I do some shopping, enjoy a beer and kick back on the porch watching the sun going down. I am joined later by Ina & JP, a lovely couple from Tahiti who I am sharing the apartment with. Life is good