North Shore is Nuts

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Given that I was coming to Hawaii in the winter, there was no way I was going to miss a chance to visit the most famous surfing pilgrimage site, the North Shore of O'ahu. Many people come to Hawaii for the sole purpose of enjoying the epic waves on the North Shore.

Coming in, I fancied myself pretty comfortable, confident, and capable in the water. I grew up spending 1-2 months each summer on Nantucket Island, off of Cape Code Massachusetts. While it's not a place known for its surf, it has waves, especially when there's a storm somewhere to the South. I mainly bodyboarded here, but I started surfing when I went to UC Santa Barbara for graduate school. The waves there were typically pretty small, and I stuck with a longboard through my 5 years there.

Despite all this experience in the water, surfing and bodyboarding, I was hardly prepared for what the North Shore serves up in wintertime. I arrived on the bus in the late afternoon, and was so stoked from watching the waves along the coastal ride, that I immediately headed out for an evening session. I decided to keep things simple, so rather than renting a surfboard from the Backpacker's hostel I was staying at, I just took the bodyboard and fins that I had brought with me from Waikiki. I asked the only other guy around (a competitive bodyboarder) where was breaking on the small/gentle side that day. He said to head out to Pipe Park, a break adjacent to the famous Bonzai Pipeline break at Ehukai beach.

It was about a 1.75 mile walk, and I got impatient on the way, so decided to try my luck at the first break that I saw others in the water at. It was called Log Cabins, and the waves there were at least as big as any I had tried before. I'd estimate 8-10 foot faces.

(Hawaiians have a bizarre scale for measuring wave size. Some say they measure the size of the barrel (what if it isn't barreling?), some say they measure from the back of the wave rather than the face, and some say they measure the ocean swell before a wave breaks, and some say they merely divide the usual face measurement in half. I find any of these ridiculous. To me, the most meaningful single number summarizing a wave's size is it's face size just before it breaks. So, I'll use that convention here.)

Naively, I tried to just paddle out through the breaks, but I all I got for my efforts was a good workout, and a reminder that I wasn't in any kind of paddling shape.

My stoke unperturbed, I continued up the beach to find Pipe Park. It was easy to find, and had the advantage of being a well-localized break that was easy to paddle around to get out. I did so, and joined a small (by pipe's standards) lineup of maybe 20 mostly surfers. After observing the break and the pecking order for 10 minutes or so, I somehow managed to grab the shoulder an 8 footer that was off to the side of the main lineup. It was a really fast ride, so fast that a flipper I was dragging behind me got ripped of, and I somehow got a calf cramp in the process. I figured that was good enough for my first session (I wore myself out a bit at Log Cabins), so went back to the hostel to hangout.

The Backpacker's Plantation Inn is the only true hostel on the North Shore. It was where the famous late surfer Mark Foo used to live way back when he hosted surfers from around the world. His sister is still a manager of the place, and still hosts surfers from around the world. I was lucky that a spot opened for me in a dorm there two day ago for $27 a night. Accommodations on the North Shore aren't cheap, and I was seriously considering renting a car and sleeping in it. More than a few diehard surfers do this or camp out. People will abandon a lot in their lives to have access to and time with these waves.

Unsurprisingly, surfing’s Mecca is occupied by denizens representing the major surfing nations of the world. Per-capita, Australia is very well-represented. A lot of Brazilians are there too, and some Japanese (It was nice to meet some counter-culture Japanese who surf, have tatoos, smoke weed, and travel the world. I didn't know these people existed.) Of course there are Americans also, largely coming from California and Hawaii itself. Mostly, everyone is just stoked to be there riding awesome waves and spreads their joy to everyone else. There are a few over-testosteroned adrenaline-junky types around, some of whom are locals who are territorial about their spots. If you can be nice in the face of rudeness, and just show common sense and get out of the way of the few maniacs, you shouldn't have any serious problems, as the vast majority are cool.

Back to the waves – so the next day, I rented a surfboard and headed out to Rocky Point, a nice break a bit north of Pipeline. My main surfing experience was on my 9'2” longboard in Santa Barbara, but I had a bit on 7'6” boards, so I rented one of those. It turns out that for the vast majority of North Shore breaks, it's pretty tough to manage anything but a true shortboard (less than 7'😉. If you don't have a nice channel to paddle out, then you are faced with trying to duck-dive a large board under the white water. While I can get away with shallow dives under small waves, it simply doesn't work, and even becomes dangerous in larger surf. The problem is, you can't get the board to go deep enough, and the white water will rip it away from you, taking you every which way with it.

I had a damn hard time paddling out with the 7'6”, and when I did get out, frankly I was just too intimidated by the drop down the giant faces to takeoff on any of those waves. So in the afternoon I took out my bodyboard again, to the same spot. I got out with the help of flippers, but at some point a monster outside wave rolled in, and I couldn't get into a safe position in time. *I've always felt my eyesight was sufficiently good (-1.75) to surf without glasses, but in a dangerous environment like the North Shore, it pays to spot monsters in advance, so maybe contacts would have been wise here* When the white water is sufficiently big, I abandon the notion of duck diving with a board, and just go under with myself, to make sure I can get nice and deep to get under most of it. I did that here, but lo and behold my $50 Waikiki board wasn't exactly equipped for this type of trauma, and the leash velcro ripped off my wrist.

Big waves rarely travel alone, but come in sets. This particular monster, which I would estimate as at least a 14-foot face, was followed by 3 more. I started to panic, as I was pretty far offshore, in deep waters, with no flotation device, and facing a pretty stiff current to get back in. The big set waves were holding me under for maybe 6 seconds, then I'd barely resurface with a chance for a breath before being put under for another 2-3 seconds (don't ask me why wave dynamics play out like this). That resurface breath could sometimes fail though, resulting in a rather salty drink.

This is pretty measly opposition by pro surfer standards, but they train for that, and probably can stay relaxed pretty well, which helps a lot. Anyway, I didn't really want to call for a rescue, so I tried to body surf the white water in. Fortunately, that worked pretty well, although you tend to get held under for even longer doing that, as you traverse with it. When I got in, my board was nowhere in sight. So I walked down the beach in the direction of the current, looking for it, but didn't see it. When I walked back up the beach, it was right where I had gone in, washed up on the shore waiting for me 😊

Anyway, that was enough for me on this particular day, as I had totally exhausted myself from paddling as well. This day made me feel pretty in over my head at the North Shore, as if I were a total newb in the water. I went back to hangout and have a few drinks with the surf crew.

The next day I took the morning off in the nearby town of Hale'iwa. I was actually hunting in vain for webbed paddling gloves there, which I had found helpful in the past, but no one seems to use them on the North Shore. People say they get tired more quickly with them, but I didn't really find that to be true in my experience. In the afternoon, I went back to Pipeline to watch some of the bodyboarding competition that was going on there, and hopefully to do a little bodyboarding myself. However, as I was paddling out, a single wave destroyed me, taking both my fins and my bodyboard off. I had been told the previous day by a cool lifeguard (all the Hawaiian lifeguards seem to be pretty damn cool) that my flippers were diving flippers and were crap for boarding. The pros use shorter, angled flippers, and tie them to their ankles with shoelaces. But I couldn't easily get a pare of spare shoelaces, and it wouldn't have worked as well with my divving fins anyway. I said fuck it for the day, recovered my board, but not my fins (good riddance), took off the useless leash, and did some skim boarding with the bodyboard on the rather incredible floodplane at Pipe. Not surfing, but better than nothing :P

The next day I was fortunate enough to find out that there in fact is a rather beginner break (well, everything is relative here), on the North Shore. It's called Freddyland, and is just down the coast from the better-known V-Land. I added it to FourSquare 😊. I really wish I had known about this break from the beginning, as I would have gotten a lot more fun surfing in. Always ask the locals!! Anyway, it was pretty nice, with a bit of a crowded lineup, but not too bad. I had a great time surfing there my final day.

Despite my pwnage by the North Shore sea, it was a really cool experience overall. Even if you have no intention of surfing, the beaches are nice enough, and it's a real treat to watch world class surfers do their thing in the huge waves all along the coast.

Let the adventures continue. My next stop is one night in Hong Kong on my way to Bangkok. I'll be in Thailand for 30 days, the limit since I didn't bother to apply for a visa in advance. Then from there to Bali. I hear there's good surf there also :D

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Photos

Pipe Wave
Courtesy of my friend, Yoshi

USA paternalism
As 2 of our group went to the toilet, a bartended quickly checked up to make sure we didn't have multiple open drinks per person in front of us. The correct procedure is to "close" the drinks like so. ROFLMAO

Surfer Bar
The only bar on the North Shore, at the ritzy resort Turtle Bay. I don't really like this place. Its totally culturally out of place on the North Shore, and not my style anyway.