In Hawaii there's a place called Waimea Bay where the best surfers in the world come to stay.
Oahu’s North Shore is currently getting pounded by very large surf and this is normally a very exciting time, especially with the Triple Crown set to kick off any day now, but also dangerous and more dangerous this year thanks to a wild influx of VALs and pre-VALs.
According to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser:
Surf is up on the North Shore at advisory level heights.
The National Weather Service said that surf on the North Shore will be 16 to 22 feet tonight, and will drop to 12 to 18 feet Tuesday.
Oahu lifeguards gave 1,365 warnings on the North Shore today, the Honolulu Emergency Services Department said.
They also made seven rescues.
Most of the preventive actions and rescues took place at Waimea Bay.
And son of of a bitch I can picture them now those bold VALs and pre-VALs standing there on Waimea’s sand having just consumed a heart-lifting episode of Transformed where the human spirit knows no bounds. Brand-new square-tailed, round nose’d SurfTech longboards tucked under pale but pilates-toned arms. Lululemon boardshorts cinched down extra tight.
Ready for battle.
Thankfully the North Shore’s famed lifeguards got to 1365 of them before the windmill paddling began for who knows how many emergency room visits would have ensued.
Many sand abrasions. Much nasal drip.
And have you been warned off a surf by a lifeguard?
How did you respond?
I live in Huntington and anytime a “big” south swell comes through, most of the town just turns into one long close-out. So I usually just go and bodysurf. I consider myself a pretty decent bodysurfer, but more often than not after ignoring the pleas of the lifeguard in the truck with the megaphone, I have some 16 year old kid lifeguard or the older clown in a boat come and tell me that I need to go in. My answer is always, “no”. It’s fun telling lifeguards, “no”, but it is hard on the ego to when outside observers treat me like I’m drowning when my underwater takeoffs and spinners feel like poetry in motion.
are you vulnerable? and Adult? are you learning???
Cool, thanks Jen. I really enjoyed reading David Rensen’s book on Dora (All For a Few Perfect Waves). There is a bit in there about Waimea Bay from Greg Noll, and how he literally pushed Dora into some big waves during that filming period. Cheers.
Windmill paddling is bad but paddling both arms at the same time (think breast stroke) is what certifies a true pre-Val. It’d be interesting to see how these people live the other parts of their lives being so open to death through ignorance yet claiming openness and vulnerability to be seen and take risks.
I know, how beautifully confected – “to catch the last wave and ride it alone” – NOW I get that Surfing thing!!
That’s awesome – “Tooggee”is a name?, Wonder where all these guys are now?
Pilates toned arms and lululemon board shorts. Nice.
Story ends with em packing their boards back into their shoulder strapped board bags for their 50m journey back to their cars
No doubt
Plenty of run ins with clubbies on our stretch of beach. Why this very morning we were surfing the beachies out the front when the ironman training crew kicked off. We moved about 50m down the beach so as to keep out of the way of them, but they still managed to paddle through where we were. The highlight was one guy ‘racing’ a group of 3 in falling off his ski right next to one of my mates. The ski bloke got cleaned up by a 2′ wave and washed in. My mate turned to me and said “That’s what I hoped would happen.”
I had this happen at a lame point last week. Upwards of 50, of varying degrees of skill, completely killed an ordinary sesh and forced everyone into the even lamer shore break. The craft, combined with the clubby joke attitude, makes them worst than most other shunned craft riders IMO
I was sitting on the beach at pipe yesterday…saw a most likely italian man with long sleeve white quik rashie, patterned villebrequin trunks, and a 9’0 rented mal walk around asking people where he should paddle out from. he had a little entourage of foreigner-vals with him cheering him on. lifeguards saw him before he jumped in the rip and told him flat out no. proceeded to argue with them as if he deserved the right to paddle out at feathering on the 4th reef pipe. the walk of shame back to his crew of tommy bahama backpack chaired italians was entertaining indeed.
One time at Balangan a muscular young Italian bloke with his attractive Asian girlfriend were there posturing on the cliff during a bigger swell. He was bragging that his board was smaller than the rest of ours and he’d seen the same thing over at GLand. Clearly VAL and clearly planning on paddling out there were no Lifeguards on duty to stop him.
..3 Russians with haircuts and inexplicably fancy boards rock up on the beach after overlanding from Bali at 8 foot low tide Speedies with of course nobody out. They come up to us and say “That is Tiger Tracks?”. We say, of course, “Yes”.They then walk/ paddle out and get smashed. It was fun.
So sick of lifeguards
Messing with Darwin’s Theory
Must we all suffer?
Vans Pro Sunset beach live online 8-10 ft
I heard a history from a local that a a few years ago crazy european guy (Hungarian maybe, can’t remember for sure) learn how to surf and in less than 30 days he was dropping waves in waimea, don’t know if it is true or not, just heard it there.
No, but I have been the lifeguard telling people that it its too dangerous
After your discussion with Scales about ELo’s Insta I did go for a peek. This was one of the pics I saw and I laughed and laughed.
Not one part of his body is doing the right thing.
The fact that he isn’t ashamed of that photo speaks volumes
That’s it in a nutshell.
We’re all tryhards at times. But Elo seems to take pride in it
Yes. And, that’s the oldest trick in the book, just tilt that photo to the left and see the real horizon line. Fake!!! That’s an even punier wave, calling your phony ass out, E-low!
This
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Seriously are those Lycra bicyclist shorts? Designed by the team that brought you the Cactus Cooler soda can. Maybe he a big fan of luchadores or paying tribute to Nacho Libre.
And who is the cunt “surf” photographer, #daveweld? I’m taking him over to WPS’ tool shed for an attitude adjustment for shooting the ELO “SUPing/VALsurfing.”
2 things I always wear when surfing Waimea……a watch, and a full wet suit.
I clicked on the “Transformed” hyperlink and was immediately greeted by:
“Transformed is a multi-part series that showcases how surfing has changed lives and cultures all over the globe. Hosted by 1977 World Champion Shaun Tomson.”
Cool to involve a surfing pioneer such as Shaunie, the Godfather of Poo-Stance, an inspiration to VALs everywhere who saw Endless Summer II once and decided they liked him because they surfed like him, seeing themselves in his stance, and were pleasantly surprised at him being able to string together a whole coherent sentence… Bustin’ down the door!
The person who thought that it would be a good idea to get creepy old Shaun to do the intro needs shooting.
Traaahhnsformed – he’s been cryogenically traahhnsformed. (Dracula emphasis)
Let’s Go!
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
We can laugh. but surfing the Bay from behind the boil on a 1960s longboard was fucking nuts.
Was that Mickey Dora doing the surfing?
Anyone feel that earthquake?
That was 1365 missed opportunities to thin the herd.
Hopefully its 1365 that will go home and tell everyone how scary it was and not to try it