The ancient Kahunas‘ hang out?

[oldmansurfer]

Here is another story about surfing on Oahu.

I was at UH and heard the surf was up in Town so I grabbed my board and walked to the beach. I got to my usual breaks 3's and 4's and the waves weren't breaking right for that area but I could see the Alamoana bowl was breaking so I paddled across to Magic Island and walked out to check it out. It was so crowded but on the far side was a break with only 5 guys out and it looked nice so I went out there. I heard it was called "Concessions" and later that it was called "Tennis courts". Anyway it was right breaking wave and was about 4 to 6 foot that day which would be wave faces up to 10 feet and real hollow, tubing out.



When I got out there these 5 guys were being possessive about the waves. One guy would line up on either side of me so by convention I had to let the surfer in the more critical position take off but when I backed off the other surfer would take off. I knew I could take off deeper than any of them because I was real good with late take offs and could usually take off deeper than most other surfers. So I positioned myself at my limit which was likely well beyond their limits and I kept paddling until the deeper guy had to take off. He usually ended up wiping out and I did this repeatedly but I think he got real tubed on at least one wave. That was fun for a while but I still didn't catch many waves. I noticed there were bigger sets (8 feet) coming in that broke outside about every 15 minutes and no one was riding them so I paddled out there and sat and waited. On the first wave that came in I got in the tube and when I came out one of them was paddling up the wave so I cranked a hard turn right next to him spraying him with water in a sort of fade back maneuver. The fade back turn slowed my board and I got in the tube again and when I came out another of them was paddling up the wave so I cranked another turn and sprayed him and got in the tube again. When I came out a third surfer was paddling up the wave so I figured what the heck and sprayed him too and got in the tube again. This was turning into a great wave and as I was in the tube for the fourth time I found myself wishing one more of them was there when I came out and my wish came true. I sprayed him too and got in the tube again. When I came out there were no more surfers but I cranked a hard turn anyway and got in the tube again.



I paddled back out and the group of them paddled toward me. I thought ok now I am going to have to fight them. But they just talked to me and asked me if I was from there. I said no I was from Kauai. They said "Oh! That explains it. We just wanted to let you know we were going to let you catch waves now." And just like that they quit trying to hog the waves and we enjoyed the rest of the day surfing together and talking story. They were basically good guys but hated the invasion of surfers from elsewhere pushing them out of the spots they surfed since they were little kids. The waves were slow weak thin lipped waves but real hollow and great for getting tubed. I never surfed this break again but I was glad I did this day. This had to be one of my best all time waves in terms of the beauty and because I repeatedly got completely deeply tubed and just for the satisfaction of spraying those guys who were trying to hog all the waves.

[oldmansurfer]

another story about surfing Oahu.

This is about a surf trip I took when I was at University of Hawaii. Most often I would walk to the beach from the dorm. It took me about 20 minutes but hey that was better than not surfing and the beach bus actually took longer. I had a friend Gregg who had a car and sometimes he would take me surfing on Tuesdays or Thursdays when I only had a class in the afternoon. We went to Diamondhead which is off the iconic mountain in Waikiki photos. You park at the top and walk down a long path to the bottom. When we got there, I saw a nude girl laying flat on her back with her mouth wide open. I was worried there was something wrong with her so I approached her and asked if she was okay. She said she was fine and asked why I wanted to know. I said because she was laying there in an odd position so it was concerning. She mentioned that she was trying tan the inside of her mouth. I said "Why?" and she explained it was because she thought it was healthy. I told her "You know the sun causes skin cancer?" and she answered "Yeah but I eat organic so I will be okay." I knew lots of people just like her from spending time living on a commune a few years earlier so I just went on the check out the surf as it was pointless discussing anything further with her..

The waves were breaking just overhead in the range we would call 3 to 4 feet. While the waves looked good it was crowded in the two spots we had surfed before but there was a wave breaking on the inside that looked pretty good and no one was riding it. It was a fun little left and I was getting tubed regularly. Gregg on the other hand was not doing so well. At one point he accused me of stealing all the waves but I told him he was in the wrong place to catch the wave and I was letting him try to catch waves but he wasn't catching them so I would catch another one. He didn't want to come out a little further to where I was and catch the waves there because he was scared of that place for a reason that he would not explain and still accusing me of taking the good waves. Well by then I had caught lots of waves and gotten tubed numerous times so I told him I was going in and he could have the waves to himself for as long as he wanted.

I went in and found a group of local guys drinking beer they greeted me and I approached them and they offered me a beer. So I hung out with them and drank beer while Gregg tried to catch waves. These guys were just like the guys I knew back on Kauai. We got along pretty good but we had a few beers and they started getting angry at the girl nude sunbathing. When they got to the point of trying to decide if they should rape her or just beat her up I decided it was time to do something. She was now standing on her head and spreading her legs wide open which I didn't have to ask her why she was doing that from my earlier conversation with her. So I just told her she should leave. She said why? and I told her those guys were getting drunk and angry with her for nude sunbathing and who knows what they might do with a couple more beers? It took a bit of convincing as she was sure she never had any problems there before and I said that didn't matter because she was about to have problems now.

She put on her clothes and I accompanied her back up the path to the parking lot and and left so I waited there for Gregg. When he arrived I asked if he caught any waves and he hadn't. Oh well I told him what to do. Weird outing LOL but I had fun.

In retrospect I think he just wasn't as good of a surfer as me but at the time I had no idea until we surfed Maile point the second time. I surfed with him quite a bit but mostly I was just caught up in surfing and not really paying attention to him and when we came in he was acting like it was as good for him as it was for me so I had no idea.

[oldmansurfer]

another one


I used to surf at a break called "Threes" for the channel marker that was nearby. It wasn't a popular break but there were regulars one of which I became. We were all kind of laid back surfers who didn't want to deal with the aggression present in the nearby breaks (Alamoana bowl, Kaisers). I had wanted to surf the famous Alamoana bowl but every time I got ready to go out there was a confrontation, someone getting punched out or getting their board broken or getting speared by a board when the surfer they dropped in on kicked it at them. After maybe three attempts to surf there I decided I didn't want to deal with the drama so gave up. We were a friendly group at Threes, with the live and let live code. One day as a few of us were talking after a surf session on a pier in the Alakai boat harbor a helicopter pilot came up to us and offered to fly his helicopter close to us so we could look up the skirts of his female passengers if we agreed to wave at him. Some of the guys agreed to so I kind of went along with them but really had no interest in looking up the skirt of passengers in a helicopter. I think we weren't enthusiastic enough for him so he complained the next time we saw him. I just said "listen I personally have no desire to look up the skirts of your passengers but give me some beer and I will wave." Everyone else agreed that was a better idea so he came by and gave us a case of beer the next time. We waved happily at him whenever he flew by. Problem solved LOL.

[oldmansurfer]

Another one from Oahu
We surfed a break off an island that was about 0.75 miles offshore from Oahu. We were driving around trying to find a place to surf but everywhere was too crowded or no waves and this little island we noticed a small right breaking off the left side of the island looking out. It looked pretty nice but it was a far paddle and we kept looking for waves and couldn't find any so as we passed back by Rabbit island we decided it was that or nothing and paddled out. We were about half way out and a group of guys on an aluminium boat pulled up to us and offered a ride to the island. It was a little worrisome because we were out in the middle of the ocean where it's likely no one would noticce if they beat us up or stole our boards but we decided to give it a chance. I think I wnet in the boat first and took the surfboards from Gregg then he got in. But they were a bunch of good guys not looking for trouble who wanted to help us to joinethem at their break. We surfed for a while and left those guys there and paddled back in because I had a class to go to. The second time we went there we managed to paddle all the way out before the guys with the boat showed up. We surfed with them and they gave us a ride back in. I am glad they didn't beat us up and steal our boards LOL. It seems surfers are mostly good guys even there on Oahu.

[oldmansurfer]

another one from Oahu
There was a break Gregg took me to called Maili point. It was a great fast breaking left that was often empty of surfers even though it was tubing out at double overhead sizes. I am not sure why this was but Gregg figured that when the north shore was up that break would be empty. We went there twice. Both times there was a single guy out who told us "I don't want to see you on my waves" when he saw us and both times in the one and a half to two times my height range. It really wasn't a problem since there was only the three of us out both times. We just waited for him to catch a wave and then we would catch one. This break was very fast and hollow and I had many tube rides there. It was similar to Horners the big left I surfed just a mile from my house. This wave was a little difficult for me to make. I had to learn which waves to take off on and where to be to catch them. By the end of the first session I was doing pretty well except there was an inside section where the wave tubed again and I didn't figure out the timing to get tubed there. Too slow and the tube collapses on you and you wipe out and too fast and you pass through the tubing part of the wave without getting tubed. The reason it was difficult is because it was very shallow there and the water sucked up the face of the wave more than the rest of the wave which slowed down the speed of the board making it difficult to adjust.

We went back there a second time and I quickly adapted to the outside portion and before the end of our session I managed to get tubed on the inside section after riding the outside section at least a couple times (making it out still on my board). riding the inside part made it a very long breaking wave more than 50 yards although past the tubing part it was a slower wave. Because of the last time we were at Diamondhead I wanted to be sure Gregg caught some waves if he was there when I paddled back out. I saw him let two perfect waves go by and I asked why didn't you go for that wave or the next one? He said those were dangerous waves and then proceeded to takeoff on a crumbly peak that was coming through which I had no idea that crumbly waves were even an option there because where I took off there were none but this was probably a swell from another direction that wasn't breaking where I was lined up. That is when I realized perhaps he wasn't such a good surfer. Funny I guess when I am surfing I get caught up in the process of lining up and catching waves and had no clue about his skills but figured since we were going to some awesome breaks that he was somewhere around my skill level.

[oldmansurfer]

last one
Haleiwa was a break I did get to surf on a particularly good day. It was breaking about with about 12 to 18 foot faces and there were only about 7 or 8 surfers out which is uncrowded for the north shore. My friend Gregg drove me there but now I wonder if he caught any waves there. It was a fast breaking right and on that day hollow on the outside and then there was a shallow inside section that was also hollow which he might say was dangerous waves. I caught a few waves but missed the best one I tried to get. I was in position but maybe arms getting tired when a 9 foot set came in I paddled as hard as I could and everyone was cheering for me but I couldn't get down the face. It was a humiliating experience. I felt so bad for wasting that wave and it would have been a great wave.

[oldmansurfer]

You know I guess it was good that I was so obtuse I didn't realize he wasn't riding many of these fantastic waves was riding. I would have worried about him not having fun. I may not recognize that I am not taking you all in consideration as well so sorry but it's not intentional.

[oldmansurfer]

The first time I experienced the ocean was when I was less than 4 years old on Maui. I guess I wandered away from my parents drawn to the ocean and a wave came up and smacked me. It didn't knock me over but I had sand up my yahoo and my parents were screaming so that made me scared. The next time was when I was older than 4 years maybe 4 and a half and on Kauai. My mother took me to Fuji beach which is also called "baby beach" because it has big tidepools that mothers like to bring their babies to get wet. I learned to dog paddle there and really enjoyed swimming like a dog around with my mom nearby for safety. After numerous swimming classes my parents trusted me to go to the beach without them. We would sand slide and try to bodysurf but the most fun was when we got these huge (around 4 to 5 foot across when inflated) truck tire inner tubes (used to be required to keep air in the tires for those who are too young). We would swim the inner tube out to the surf and 4 or five of us would try to hang on to the tube when the wave caught it and pushed it in. That was such a fun thing and I got used to getting pounded by the surf.

[BoMan]

My first experience in the ocean wasn't so fun. I was 5 years old and didn't know how to swim. My Dad and Grandpa swam beyond the shore break pulling me on a surf mat. I shivered and was afraid of the waves and the dark, cloudy water. When Gramps felt the time was right he demonstrated how to dog paddle and pitched me into the water. I nearly made it back to the mat when rising water sloshed into my gaping mouth and caused me to panic. Arms flailing I went under! They fished me out but the experience made me fear the ocean for a whole year.

My grandson is now 5 years old and he will learn to swim in a pool before joining me in the ocean.

[oldmansurfer]

The Wailua river empties into the ocean on the south side of the beach. One day while we were goofing off we found huge plastic bag. The size was maybe large enough to put a full standup refrigerator in it and we found rocks to use as weights and filled it full of air then sank it to the bottom of the river just a few yards from the ocean. Then we would dive down and come up inside and hang out and talk there. You couldn't see it very well from the side of the river so we would pretend to others that we were holding our breaths for 5 minutes or so. LOL I recall a girl came by so I did that to impress her and she was impressed but even more so once I revealed the secret and we dove in there together. She was cute and I liked her but I was too young and too shy to do anything so we just talked LOL I could actually hold my breath for a couple minutes without the bag.

[oldmansurfer]

We used to sand slide which is called skim boarding these days. My parents bought us all the sand slide boards that were made by one of my friends parents and painted blue. There is a bit of a learning curve when trying to sand slide. Basically you fall a lot starting out but once you get it down you rarely fall . The basic premise is this, there is a layer of water along the shoreline after a wave washes up on the shore. This layer varies in thickness depending on the shape of the shoreline and the time after the wave comes in and the coarseness of the sand. To go fast and far sliding you want just a thin layer less than an inch. You get forward momentum by running along and tossing the board in front of you then jumping on it. I think the modern skimboards do well in deeper water and probably don't have a completely flat bottom as our boards did. Anyway once you past the falling down stage it was fun but we never tried to ride waves like the current skimboarders do. We would ride out into the break and launch off the wave to see how high we could fly. Later on when we were old enough to drive we would bring a car onto the beach and ski tow rope and tow in skimboarding LOL. It was a bit dangerous and as soon as one of us got hurt we quit doing it. I think we were getting up to about 50 mph

[oldmansurfer]

Me and my friends would often ride bikes or walk to the beach during the summertime. I lived about a 20 minute walk to the beach. Maybe 15 minutes if I took all the shortcuts across yards and through hedges etc. In the summer we would spend most of the day at the beach so we would bring sand slide boards and plan on eating at the beach which usually amounted to catching fish and eating whatever we caught so we brought a fishing pole and a scoop net to catch bait with. I would also stick a coke in the freezer a couple hours before the trip and bring some butter and salt and pepper and maybe bread or crackers to go along with the fish I caught to eat and my pocket knife to cut the fish up with. I always caught something to eat made a fire and cooked it on the fire. By the time we ate lunch the coke which was frozen would have thawed out and be ready to drink. I think there were still no easy opening cans in those days so you needed a can opener to drink the coke (pocket knife had that). On other days we would hike to base of a water fall and spend all day there as well and catch our lunch from the pool at the bottom of the waterfall. This was maybe a 45 minute hike from my house. Yeah it was a great place to grow up.

[oldmansurfer]

When I started bodysurfing it was with no fins and I used to go straight to the beach. I guess I learned where to be to takeoff but would just go straight to the beach because I never knew there was anything different. One of the older guys told me I Should try going sideways and I didn't understand what he was saying so I asked him to show me and he did. I tried it and that was like a whole other level to it. I vowed to never ride the whitewater unless it was necessary. This is a vow that has sort of stayed with me through the rest of my wave riding career

[oldmansurfer]

I started hitchhiking to a beach that was about a 30 minute car ride away from where I lived. This was about 2 hours hitchhiking give or take an hour. While there one day I found a fin. What the protocol was for finding a lost fin in the water was to hold it up and yell "Fin, Fin" and if no one takes it you can chose to take it. So no one took it after about 5 minutes of trying to find the owner at this relatively small beach. It was about my size so I tried it on and it fit snuggly. A little while later I found the other side of that pair and did once again try to find the owner. and put it on. This took my bodysurfing up a notch because it made it much easier to catch waves and the really big waves that I had been unable to catch suddenly became catchable. These fins although they were very tight still got ripped off my feet on the bigger waves. I found and bought some fin straps that were like 3 half circle straps all connected together so from the side they looked like a Y. You put your foot between 2 straps and pulled it up your ankle then put your fin on and pulled the third strap around the bottom of the fin. This worked well except the very largest of waves but still it stopped the fin from coming off completely.

[oldmansurfer]

If you want to look up the fin strap try googling "rubber fin strap"

[oldmansurfer]

There was a body surfing technique that I learned form someone. that was very different from what everyone does and that is keeping your arms at your sides and pushing away from the water with your hands. Typically this will give you a little speed boost but with the fins and steep waves with around a 4 to 8 foot face I found I would come completely out of the water on the drop so that only my fins and hands were touching the water. This made me extremely fast. I could do bottom turns then go back and hit the lip and back down to make another bottom turn and back up to hit the lip much like a board surfer might do. Back then I was a skinny little kid and once the waves got to the 8 foot face size and sometimes smaller I had trouble holding my body out of the water and instead of having control I started skipping across the water like a stone. After a couple instances of skipping I developed a technique to deal with that. While airborne between skips I would drop my inside arm into the water below and this resulted in my body pivoting around that arm throwing my legs to the top of the wave and I would swim to take off again and most like skip again but I was able to stay on the wave and ride it all the way across the bay a feat that I had never seen anyone do not to mention no one else was doing this technique. every day that I didn't body surf I would lay on the ground and push my hands like I was trying to push myself out of the water. I found that if I locked my elbows on my chest so they weren't entirely at my sides I could stay in control on slightly larger waves. This technique requires popping out of the water on the drop or at least as far as I could tell I was completely unable to rise out of the water without the drop. I could barely do a spinner or an underwater takeoff which all the good body surfers were doing but I had my own thing going. At the time didn't realize how different this was it was just my different way. Till now I have never seen a video of anyone doing this. Not really sure why that is. I imagine though that I would be unable to keep my overweight out of shape body out of the water since I probably weigh twice as much or more than I did back then.

[oldmansurfer]

I am putting this in the proper thread. I have been home with covid but only sick for 2 days. I used to try using my sand slide board to bodyboard with most often without fins. The increased effort to catch the waves was hardly worth the increased speed as my sand slide board was just a little faster than bodysurfing. There was a store version available which was similar in shape to my sand slide board except it was spooned out concave deck and convex bottom. This wasn't any better than my sand slide board so for a while I gave up on sand sliding. I regained an interest when I saw people making good use of the boards at my bodysurfing breaks. I went back to my sand slide board and one of the neighborhood kids saw me and offered to loan me his sand slide board which was different from mine. He assured me it was going to be an improvement. He had just started board surfing and didn't use it anymore. The very first wave I caught I flew across the wave at a much more rapid rate than seemed possible. It wasn't that big of a wave, maybe 3 foot face and it looked like it was going to closeout but I made it through all the sections. Suddenly hooked on paipo boarding. I made all my future models based on that design. The later models included a glassed in fiberglass rope handle. Not only was it fast but I got tubed quite often and made it out most of the time. My neighborhood friends took me along with them to go to various surf spots. They guys at the place I surfed the most invited me out to the lineup. Because I was poaching waves inside of them. Because it was a wooden board I could dive all the ways to the bottom and avoid most of the pounding the waves do so I could sit inside of them and catch the waves the let go by. They saw me there and were apparently impressed but I told them I didn't know the rules of the lineup and they said they would instruct me. I am not sure if that was the best decision for me as I was doing pretty well without the invite but at least I go to know the rules of the lineup. One of the surfers who was also a friend said "I didn't know you could do that with a paipo board." I said "Do what?" He answered "You know like what you are doing". I am not sure but I think he was saying he was jealous because I was getting tube on nearly every wave.

[oldmansurfer]

I quickly became addicted to paipo boarding as it was such and improvement from bodysurfing as it was way faster allowing me to make waves that there is no way I could make them and in addition I got tubed and made it out nearly every day whereas bodysurfing I rarely made it out of a tube. I started altering the basic design of my board adding a concave in the nose and a channel from the concave to the tail and a nose rocker created by placing a heavy weight on the nose and pouring boiling hot water on it then letting it dry. I added a layer of glass on the deck and a rope handle on the nose to hold on to the board when wiping out. One day in the fall after I graduated from school I was sitting around the house with my paipo boarding pal trying to figure out what to do. He said we should go to the north shore because he heard it was up. I agreed so we went out there and pulled up to the break called "Pine trees" and it was empty perfection. We couldn't believe how lucky we were. So we went out only to find it was huge with faces of 15 or more feet and sets breaking outside with 20 foot faces We both chickened out and decided to poach an inside wave and call it a loss. Then the next day were sitting around wondering what to do and my pal says "I don't know about you but I want to go try those big waves on the north shore and it is still up." I was feeling bad having not attempted to ride those big waves and agreed. This has been another lesson that carried on with me although now I am old and out of shape so no longer matters. The waves are only there for a fleeting moment and you need to ride them or regret not riding them for the rest of your life.

So we went back to pine trees and again it was empty perfection so we went out. The first wave I caught was so big and steep, I needed to use my arms to catch the wave and felt like I was going to fall out of the sky but turned my board at the top and the shape of my board was such that the tail was the widest point of the baord and it worked like a fin sticking into the side of the waves. I went so fast got so tubed and made it out. At the end of the waves there was a slack section with about an 8 to 10 foot face and once I hit that I started skipping just like I did bodysurfing and I already knew the solution although the skips were much higher like maybe 6 feet up off the wave. So I put may arm out and it worked great just like bodysurfing I spun around and my legs hit the top of the wave and I paddled back into the wave and then did some spinning as that was the only trick I knew for slack portions of the wave.

I caught so many waves and then realized my pal was not catching many and I asked him what was up. He told me he was tired from getting pounded. By then I had taken a few poundings but they weren't so bad. I got pounded bodysurfing worse than that. After a while I realized my friends board was not wider on the end and he was dropping down the waves instead of turning at the top. Oh well but I had a fantastic day bodysurfing after getting over the initial fear of the waves. You might wonder about paddling out in these big waves but our boards were minimally floating, just pieces of wood and we could grab them and dive completely under the biggest of waves and come up after it passed overhead. I caught waves that had tubes so big that you could place a whole school bus in the tube in front of me. I found that riding high up allowed for maximum speed and often on the deepest tubes I had there was a sensation of going sideways. The board was pointed down the wave but made no progress in the direction however it was moving extremely fast sideways. This sensation also occurred when I later board surfed. The waves where I got that sensation I almost always made the wave and came out of the tube. One of the waves I caught where you could put a whole bus in front of me closed out on me. I had almost made it out but the wave collapsed on me right at the end of the tubing part of the wave. The wave tossed me up in the air where I was maybe 10 feet or so above the top of the whitewater. I could see the whitewater was sloping down where I was going to land so I arranged my board to land on it with a downward orientation so that hopefully I could continue on and it worked. To my surprise I hit the whitewater and shot out in front of it bottom turned and then did spinners as that was my only trick.

That day we surfed by ourselves for an hour or two but then some surfers came out but about every ten or 15 minutes a huge set would roll through breaking way outside and none of the surfers were in position to avoid it and suddenly we were alone again. This repeated a few times till we went in. After paddling out for the second time one of the surfers paddled over to me and offered to let me use his surfboard if I let him use my paipo board. I told him I wasn't a surfer and didn't want to use his board. But he wanted to use my paipo board because he had never seen a paipo boarder doing what I was doing. Translated to getting tubed and making it out repeatedly. Later on I might have entertained the notion of letting him use my paipo board but this was still novel to me, getting tubed in huge waves and making it out.

After that session my pal and I both bought wetsuits which for me was a beavertail which I cut the tail off eventually but it was not only to keep us warm but more so in my case to pad my body from the board on these huge waves.

[BoMan]

You should write a book!

[BoMan]

I assume that my active life style of surfing, skating and cycling keeps me pretty safe from heart problems. I check my blood pressure regularly and hover around 115 over 70 with heart rate of 50. One thing in my favor is that I exercise at a comfortable pace and don't fall into the trap of chasing personal bests at my lofty age of 72. I find it better for my enjoyment to surf when I want, where I want and how I want.

That said I wonder if I should get some tests done on my cardio system? I am not even convinced that these tests can reliably predict a looming cardiac event. How have other members of the group dealt with their heart health?