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…
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 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Another city so another tour bus, on which I somehow manage to get a discount or being a member of the military. I see if I can spot the location of a few movies that were filmed in Chicago:
- The Untouchables (1987)
- When Harry Met Sally (1989)
- Backdraft (1991)
- Road to Perdition (2002)
- The Fugitive (1993)
- The Blues Brothers (1980)
- The Color of Money (1986)
- The Dark Knight (2008)
- Risky Business (1983)
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
However I’m more interested in the possibility of surfing on a freshwater lake. Lake Michigan is one of the great lakes, all of which are so big that huge waves can be generated on them. A jogger was recently swept off the footpath near Chicago and drowned in the monster surf which can crash along the shoreline. Sadly there isnt enough swell close to town, and what there is has been blown out by the wind coming off the lake. Disappointing because I need to catch some waves before heading out to Hawaii next week and I am running out of time.
I am marginally consoled by driving down Pearson Street in the north of the city and have time for a couple of beers and a Chicago town pizza whilst watching the Chicago Bears play NFL before heading off to the airport.
Bradley Wiggans I am not, but Steve lends me a bike which I take for a trek down to the shore after finally sorting thing with Vodafone. I am out on it for two and a half hours looking to see if there is any surf on the Atlantic coast. The entire seaforont from Sandy Hook to Sea Bright has been absolutely trashed by Hurricane Sandy. The place in the picture is a leisure complex called driftwood which is just about all it is good for. However many other buildings have been completely wiped off the map and turned to splinters.
Every business is closed so there is no chance of hiring a board. There is a wave here and it looks ok until you realise that it is indeed a seagull in the foreground, so the inability to lay my hands on a board isn’t an issue. I take my shoes and socks off and have a quick paddle so that I have at least got wet in the Atlantic on this trip.
My Home Break
I am expecting this to be the most upsetting wave along the way. Had a very busy but lovely two months being pampered by my Mum in North Wales before leaving on my travels. We enjoyed a lovely walk with Hugo along the sea front at Llanduno before I left, which is where I grew up and my home break. Lovely day and a wonderful image to take away with me. I was sent on my way with lots of love and a packed lunch like I was going on a school trip to Conwy Castle. Quite sad to be leaving.
My apologies to all those I didn’t get to spend as much time with as I would have liked to before departing. So much admin, one loft conversion, one garage clearance, one mototorbike sale, a neverending chase of the dog around the house, one disposal of milk bottle collection, moving my entire life in and out of storage, and Vodafone failing in every regard to do what they said they would do all cost me loads of time, which impacted on the goodbye time. Sadly Vodafone is an ongoing battle.
Anyway I am on the road! Watch out world here I come.
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