Wedding Adventure - Day 8 - Hawaii

We awoke this morning to find that the ocean outside had changed overnight. The waves had grown much bigger as front started to push down from Alaska. When we arrived, the waves were in the 5 to 12-foot range. They were predicting waves in the 15 to 20-foot range by the end of the day, with the odd waves possible reaching 25 feet!

The day before I had booked a surf lesson in order to fulfill my dream or surfing on the North Shore. Chance, my guide from the Hans Hedeman Surf School located in the Turtle Bay resort, helped me paddle out at Pau’ena Point where I managed to get up on a couple 3 to 5-foot waves for a few short seconds each. It was a lot of fun and a triumph considering my physical condistion and that a year ago my illness almost had me in the hospital. Even if I had been in shape, this was considerably more diificult than my last surfing experience at Santa Monica in California. There I managed to get a couple good rides on some slow rolling waves over a shallow sandy bottom. Here the waves were much bigger and steeper, the current a lot stronger, and the bottom covered in rocks and reef. I did hit the bottom once with my foot and scraped up my toes pretty bad. Still, I had an absolute blast out there even though I wound up dead tired. At the time I was surfing, the air temperature was 72 degrees and the water temperature was 74 degrees. With these nearly perfect conditions I didn’t even need to wear a wetsuit. I was able to wear my usual swim trunks and a rash guard shirt. Even though Pau’ena has sheltered surf for beginners, during the lesson you could tell that the waves were getting bigger and more and more people were paddling out. At some of the more open surfing spots, the waves were getting close to forecast size and it was becoming the biggest and best day of the surf season so far. After my surfing we triumph we celebrated with some more Matsumoto’s shave ice! I had lime this time and it was also good.

After lunch we headed for the more sheltered beach at Turtle Bay (Kuilima Cove) that still had some nice crashing waves. Amy and I stashed our stuff on the beach and went for a swim. The water was shallow enough that you could swim out to the first reef. Normally during the winter on the North Shore the water is too stirred up to be clear enough for good snorkeling, but standing in the shallow water over the reef, you could look down and see tropical fish swimming around your ankles. It was very cool.

At one point I was trying to get on the reef by stepping on some rocks under the water. The “rock” kept sort of moving away from me. Then I looked down and noticed that the rock had fins and a shell pattern on it. I was actually trying to step on a sea turtle! It kind of freaked me out and I started treading backwards away from it, but it seemed to hardly notice and swam away on its own.

After swimming we hung out on the balcony watching the steady lineup of surfers paddling out Kuilima, the surfing spot right next to the hotel. A few surfers were even more adventurous, going for some tow-in surfing on the outer-outer-outer reef which with the big swells was breaking nicely over 15 feet.

We walked down to sit on the reef and rocks while watching the sunset. It was a spectacular view with the surfers riding waves in front of the setting sun; something right out of “The Endless Summer”. It seemed like they were going to keep going to see who could last the longest into the rapidly adding light when Coast Guard helicopters started to fly up and down the North Shore with their spotlights shining down on the waves. This got the last few holdouts into shore pretty quick.

We later learned that a number of surfers had to be pulled from the waves via helicopter that day. At dusk, one surfer was reported missing when he didn’t rejoin his friends on shore and was the subject of the intense helicopter search.

For dinner we elected to eat at the Bayside Café, the restaurant and sports bar in the hotel. The problem with a sports bar in Hawaii is that because of the time change, by the time dinner rolls around, most of the games are over. The Dallas Mavericks happened to be playing the Lakers in LA, so what would usually be a late-night matchup made for good dinner entertainment since it was too dark out to enjoy the view of the ocean out the windows. After the long day swimming in the ocean and battling waves, Amy had a burger and fries and I had pizza.