Wedding Adventure - Day 9 - Hawaii

Saturday morning we awoke crashing waves. The swell had peaked out overnight and although the waves were still big, the front had moved in and along with it, the wind had picked up, blowing most of the waves apart, making for tough surfing conditions. A Coast Guard airplane was still flying along the beach looking for the missing surfer. We later found out that he had been washed down the shore to a different beach where he went home safely without telling any of the friends he was out surfing with and were left wondering when he didn’t show on the beach at the end of the day.

With the big waves rolling in, the surfing contest at Sunset Beach was resuming this morning and we decided to go watch. The contest is the second jewel of the Van’s Triple Crown of Surfing, held every year in Hawaii as the final three stops of the world pro surfing tour. Yes, such things exist on ESPN2 when nothing else is on. The first jewel was held at Haleiwa a few weeks prior and the third jewel would be held at Pipeline at the beginning of December. The contests are scheduled over a two-week span, but the contest is only staged on days with good surfing conditions. Friday was perfect with big waves and nice weather while today things were getting a bit choppy.

Since we were arriving at the contest from the Turtle Bay end and not from the Haleiwa end (where everybody from Honolulu driving up for the day would be coming from) and there is only one road along the North Shore, we managed to find a good close parking spot about a ten-minute walk from Sunset Beach. We found a nice spot in the crowd on the beach and settled in to watch the pro surfers tackle waves in the 15 to 20-foot range. Every few minutes, a monster set would plow through the line-up, sending the surfers paddling out f the way and those sitting closest to the water scurrying as the huge waves eventually crashed ashore. The crazy accent of the PA announcer made this whole experience enjoyable and they did a good job of explaining how everything worked between the 20 minute score heats.

Unfortunately, the clouds rolled in and the rain started to come pouring down. It let up once, but the second time appeared to be sticking around for a while. Since the rain decreased visibility to the point where it was hard to see any of the surfing action, we decided to go back to the hotel where we spent the remainder of the rainy afternoon in our hotel room reading and going through all of the wedding photos that we had already received as prints.

For dinner (on the recommendation of Hurricane Bob a few days earlier) we dashed between the raindrops and went to Lei Lei’s, located in the clubhouse of the golf course at Turtle Bay. Another fabulous meal, I had the pork shop while Amy had fresh ahi tuna again.