The ancient Kahunas‘ hang out?

[oldmansurfer]

Kealia is the beach where I learned to surf. It is about 5 miles north of where I live and these days fairly crowded. Back when I decided to learn to surf on a surfboard it wasn't crowded. Most days there was no one out. The surfers from the east side hung out at the beach closest to my home. In those days it was a forbidding place, looked dark and dangerous from the road that parallels it. You couldn't see most of the beach due to trees and brush in the way. Kealia is a bay also and has a few different breaks but the left side is where most surfers go. It had a road that crossed the cane truck road and a good sized parking lot , at least good enough for the crowds that frequented the place. From the parking lot there was a sand road that drove to another parking lot closer to the takeoff point that most surfers used, however mostly they didn't use that road because it had deep sand and was easy to get stuck. That part of the beach was called The Landing because they used to land boats there. They piled a bunch of boulders in a line going out to create a shelter for the boats. No one lands boats there anymore but the boulder are still there and serve as a measure of how big the surf is. Most of the time the waves break inside of the boulders but when it's big it breaks outside.

The Landing breaks right and left depending on the day. Bigger days the left is usually better on smaller days usually the right is better but it can and does break both ways often. The bottom is a mix of sand and rocks and reef (and my hundred dollar waterproof watch given to me for graduation) which changes a little with the day.

The middle part can break in a variety of ways. One way is a really fast breaking right. This used to happen about every 2 months not sure about these days as I never surf there anymore. It's more often just a mixture of waves breaking at sand bar peaks. I am sure they have names for all the breaks these days as that seems to be a thing but we never used to. It was just the Landing the middle part or the river mouth which is on the opposite side of the beach. The river mouth is where hurricane swells can make huge (10 to 15 foot Hawaiian) rideable waves (the landing also may break nicely on the same swell.) I learned at first at the river mouth part of the beach mostly because I didn't want to be in anyone's way. I just found a small peak and caught waves there. Prior to that I had bodyboarded there a bit. I moved out of my parents house and to a house close to Kealia. I even walked to the beach a few times after selling my car.

When I left that house 2 years later I moved a bit further away from the beach but still just a 20 minute walk. I lived then next to a stream that was the river that opened to the river mouth on the right side of the beach. Sometimes I would jump in the stream and paddle down to the ocean then paddle back up stream to where I lived. I was in such good shape back in those days.

Even though I never surf there anymore I still feel a connection with that beach. It was where I learned to surf and the source of countless great waves there over the years. When I graduated from college I went back there and when I met my wife we went surfing there. I felt like that beach saved my life and feel deeply in debt to that beach. I used to do my own beach cleanups. At first it was just a couple bags of trash but the last time it was like more than 50 large trash bags full of crap that I picked up. This was before college. After college my life got too busy.
Now the beach is wide open with lots of places to park but crowded and it has pavilions and paved roads and a lifeguard or two (and probably trash cans). Back then I surfed three out of four times alone with no one else out. I bet that is unlikely these days. It's always crowded when I drive by.

[oldmansurfer]

I was a bodysurfer as a kid growing up here on Kauai. I loved bodysurfing and switched to paipoboarding once it became apparent the obvious benefits of paipoboarding over bodysurfing which was incredible speed making it possible to ride waves much longer than bodysurfing. I was heavy into paipoboarding when I turned 18 in the winter after I graduated from high school and my parents in their much greater wisdom than my own, bought me a state of the art shortboard for my birthday (6'10"x18"x2.75"). I had moved out of my parents house and initially tried it a couple days then decided it was too difficult and put it in the corner of my room. Then I spent 2 weeks making a new paipo board I shaped a concave that went to a narrow channel to widen again after mid board and bent the marine plywood to create a nose rocker and let it dry before fiberglassing it and adding a fiberglass rope handle in the nose. I was starting to ride my paipo boards on my knees because I could alter my center of balance more which is something that surfing standing up offered an even much greater advantage. At Kealia on a day with about 14 to 15 foot faces I was kneeboarding on my brand new paipoboard. It was working great and I did a turn off the top of the wave and got caught by the lip at the bottom of the wave. It didn't feel like much but I could feel the board snapped in two. The fiberglass was still holding but the wood broke completely. I thought about spending another 2 weeks making a board but the surfboard in the corner of the room was telling me "It's time to learn to surf." So I went to my friends who surfed and asked them what is the quickest way to learn to surf? They all said surf as much as possible, so I surfed every day. I surfed on weekdays after work. I had bought a VW camper before I moved out of my parents house so I just kept my board in my car and changed in the back and drove to Kealia usually but if the beach closest to me which was right across the street from the Hotel that I worked in I would go there. Kealia was closer to my house and most of the time that is where I went. I went there to try the board out after my parents gave it to me. I was very familiar with Kealia from paipoboarding and knew that the area I went to would almost never have any surfers so I was out of their way.

The first day of learning I was intent on only catching unbroken waves. I gave up riding whitewater back when I was a kid bodysurfing. Once I learned to ride in front of the breaking wave that was it. I promised myself to never ride whitewater again. So 9 out of 10 waves that I managed to catch I would drop down the face and wipeout. On the tenth wave I would still be up thinking oh my gosh I am riding a wave and then shoot off the end of the wave because I didn't turn back. By two weeks it was falling down 1 out of 10 waves I caught and mostly being able to ride the rest for a bit without going off the end of the wave kind of staying with the power mostly.

[oldmansurfer]

Kealia was the first place I surfed with friends and in fact anyone else other than myself. I had this group of friends who were surfers and they invited me a few times to go with them, them surfing and me paipoboarding. I got to go to a bunch of breaks I never been to before with them. Once I started surfing they invited me to go surfing with them. The first time after I started surfing they invited me to go to Kealia where I probably was going to go anyway but without them I would have found a smaller peak at Kealia. I had become comfortable with 6 foot faced waves but hadn't tried anything bigger yet (2 months of learning to surf). It wasn't that I was afraid of waves bigger as I had bodysurfed and paipoboarded waves much bigger (20 foot faces). It was my small steps method of learning. I didn't want to do too big of a jump in size because I am sure the danger goes up with size yet my skill level does not. Seems to make sense not to push it too much. Anyway that day was 8 foot faces and if I was paipoboarding I would have been getting tubed on nearly every wave but it would be a few months before my first tube ride surfing and years before I approached a similar tube riding ability surfing.

They convinced me to go out even though I didn't want to initially. My first wave was wild because of the speed from the additional height. I was off balance for the whole wave because it was much faster than what I was used to and once I turned the board overturned because of the speed and the whole wave was a series of turns with me overturning every single turn until I cutout which I did intentionally after the wave got small enough that I could control the board. I was so embarrassed because in my mind I was flying all over the wave completely out of my control but one of the other surfers paddled over and told me he thought I was shredding it. During the course of the day I got used to the additional speed and then I never made turns like that first wave because that was beyond my ability. I guess there is something to be said for having a good sense of balance and quick reflexes but that alone doesn't make you a good surfer, however it can fool others. Most likely my wave reading skills was on par with all of them as I had been riding waves for just as long as them just not surfing on a surfboard.

[oldmansurfer]

I surfed the river mouth area of Kealia initially and even that first time with my friends but the waves were more consistent and better on average by the Landing so eventually I migrated into that area and go to know the regulars. There was about 8 to 10 guys who regularly surfed the Landing including me. They were all pretty decent surfers except for me. I was still learning but we all got along fairly well and looked out for each other. I didn't socialize with them much but for times in the ocean with a break in the waves. They all knew each other better than me although I think many of them knew my younger brother or knew of me from my paipoboarding. There was another 10 or so guys who irregularly surfed Kealia who I also got to know somewhat. As far as I knew I was the most regular surfer there because 3 out of 4 times I was alone at the Landing. Perhaps I was on a different schedule but after work most days and weekends most of the time. I learned that the waves often don't look as good as they feel to ride so I always went out if there were any waves. I observed car loads of surfers on multiple occasions drive up and watch the surf for 15 minutes then leave while I am waxing my board and getting ready to go out.

The beach turns a corner and the sand slopes up steeply in that area. This makes for backwash which can be used as a power assist. You could tell from far away who was a regular and who was clueless. The regulars all timed a backwash and ran and jumped on their board to ride it out. The really good surfers would land on their boards standing and us lower level surfers would land laying down. Actually as I got better at surfing I tried the standing entry but put big pressure dings in my board and decided it wasn't worth it.

From that corner area you paddle out and on smaller days it's really easy but with bigger days you need to duck dive. I was probably surfing there for a year almost every day before I realized the really good surfers were paddling over the left a bit, just about 5 or 6 foot over. To do so required paddling against a strong current sweeping you the opposite direction but once you were over there you avoided having to duck dive except the really big days. For us surfers that corner are was just a normal day but it was treacherous for beach walkers as they would get swept into the ocean because the waves go up the steep sand and drag them back down and it gets deep right next to the shore in that area so they can't stand back up. If they can't swim it's all over, they drown. On bigger days I would walk all the ways to the landing area which is calm and sheltered from the surf and paddle out there. This allowed me to beat the good paddlers out even if we both started from the corner area with them going out and me walking down the beach 30 yards. Plus once out there I was fresh and ready to go and they would be tired from duckdiving and taking numerous waves on the head.

Kealia catches good swells from hurricanes to the east which happens regularly. Those swells bring a different crowd. A couple of the regulars liked the big waves and surfers from all over the island will show up if there isn't surf elsewhere. But the two times I surfed hurricane swells it was just me and one other guy the same guy on both swells. It will also catch a wrap around swell from a north swell. Mostly it's a wind swell because of the tradewinds which come from the northeast.

[oldmansurfer]

The local surfers could tell if someone was new to Kealia by the way they got in and out of the water. I talked about the getting in part and it wasn't just for show if you tried to enter the ocean without a running start it often meant taking a pounding in the shore break. I am not sure what they thought of me walking around to the sheltered area inside the Landing and paddling from there. Usually I only did this on big days but once in a while I might do it to keep my hair dry while paddling out. We all thought it was cool to get tubed and come out with dry hair. I worked at it for a while but after the first couple times it kind of lost it's luster. It didn't really seem like that difficult of a thing to do and the real problem was getting out to the lineup with dry hair.

Getting out of the water people would often get pounded as well if they didn't know how to do it. We all learned to go with the flow so as you are walking in and a wave comes behind you and pushes you , you just walk along with the wave and it is just like it is assisting you to come in instead of slamming you down. If we saw someone new we would observe how they get in and out and usually laugh at the problems they had. AHH the good old days LOL

[oldmansurfer]

I surfed every day mostly at Kealia beach while learning to surf and after a while the conditions on some days weren't challenging enough for me. The solution was to surf switch stance on those days. I didn't like surfing backside so I thought this would fix that problem. It was mostly on days when the waves were smaller than head high. The only wave I recall from all those days doing it was this one. I took off at the peak on a wave that looked like it would be a nice left breaking wave. While taking the drop switch stance I was off balance a bit and ended up fading to the right. The peak pitched over and going left was no longer an option so I went right (backside switch stance). It looked like it was going to tube so I crouched way down and got completely covered and made it out. I was so happy I held my arms up in a claim and looked around to see in anyone was there to see my wave but like usual I was all alone. At that point in my surfing I had only gotten tubed a couple times backside regular stance so this was a double exciting thing for me. Funny thing is I learned to enjoy surfing backside and eventually quit switch stance surfing.

[oldmansurfer]

I don't know why I remember waves so well. It seems many surfers do not. Funny while I can recall the backside switch stance tube but not so well the frontside switch stance tube rides I had prior to that wave. All I can remember is the tubes were small and not beautiful and overall not too interesting. I did try switch stance once on a bigger wave maybe with a 10 to 12 foot face. For whatever reasons I can't recall much other than it wasn't a pleasant experience and I was very scared. Fear is not unusual for me but I use the fear to increase my performance level. In this case it didn't have that effect. Fear can make you perform at a very high level or it can make you freeze like a deer in the headlights. I think I was in that freeze mode so maybe that is why I don't remember that wave. In any event it became clear that I could surf well backside maybe even better than surfers who were frontside and certainly better than my switch stance. It's different but backside has it advantages.

I still remember the first wave that I did a hard off the top frontside turn. It was at Kealia in the middle to river mouth part and the wave had a 6 plus foot face. I had spent a couple weeks doing mental imaging of what I was going to do, sort of going through the motions while on land as much as I could. The wave presented itself for a frontside off the lip turn and I slammed it and surprised myself with how easy it was to do. From then on I could just slam an off the lip frontside. Anyway I can remember how that wave looked still today at least the part where I hit the lip and can see it in my mind. Why? I don't know but really till I read Gerry Lopez's book I thought everyone could remember waves like me.

[oldmansurfer]

The mental imaging thing has worked for me in a few situations when I has used it. One specific time was at Kealia beach. I had just seen a photo to Barry Kanaiaupuni doing turn at the top of a wave with his single fin above the top of the wave out of the water. It looked so powerful and I thought I want to do that so I did mental imaging for maybe a month every day at home. I would imagine what the wave would look like and what I would do and stand in my surfing stance and try to move my body as I imagined I would to do that maneuver. Then the opportunity arrive to try it so I did it successfully on the first try and every one after that. But funny thing what I was actually doing wasn't what Barry was doing and instead it was more like a rail slide on the lip (skateboarding maneuver). I didn't know for a year or so that wasn't what others were doing LOL I guess I made up my own maneuver and to this day I haven't ever seen anyone do it. What I did was to pop the fin out of the water and bring my body up to the top of the wave instead of a power turn where you would stay in front of the lip not on top of it. My board would slide sideways along the lip until the fin contacted the back of the wave forcing the board forward because I was sliding faster than the wave was breaking or I would be forced to step on my front foot to cause the board to drop back down the wave to keep from getting pitched over when the wave was breaking faster than I was sliding. It was fun maneuver but no one else was doing it. I haven't gotten to the point of trying this again in my current relearning to surf but it may be easier to do with a single fin.

[oldmansurfer]

Once I was surfing Kealia beach and there was only one other guy out. He was my classmate from high school and I always thought of him as a friend. He irregularly surfed at Kealia. I only saw him there like 2 or 3 times out of all the times I surfed there. On this day however he paddled up to me and said. "I don't want to see you on my wave. What I mean is if I am on the wave then it's my wave. I don't care if you take off first or I do. If I am on the wave then it's mine." I say "Geez. Whatever ok yeah. There's plenty of waves." I just stayed away from him and let him catch a wave then I caught one. I didn't know it but there was a Hawaiian rights movement leading to this exact same dialogue with multiple different surfers all over the state. I caught one wave though and got totally tubed and then the tube collapsed on me and I popped out of the whitewater to see this guy trying to take off on the wave. He pulls back but I think "Oh crap now he's going to give me crap for riding his wave." I paddle out and he comes over to me and I am thinking "crap now we're going to fight" and I am mentally preparing myself for that. But he just asks me "How did you do that?" I said "Do what?" He said "How did you keep from falling down when the wave collapsed on you?" I was relieved and thought it was strange. He was probably a better surfer than me but here he was asking me how to do something. Anyway I told him I just lean into the lip so it presses me down into the board. He said "I wish I could do that." That's so cool in a way. What a compliment coming from him. But I had learned to do this at Wailua beach (the one closest to my home) because it often ended in a closeout tube and I would pull in get covered and stand up to try to come out the back of the wave.

[oldmansurfer]

It was a good day at Kealia breaking about 6 to 8 foot faces and I was surfing alone when a carload of mainlanders arrived and they came out to surf with me. Turns out they came directly from the airport and saw me having a good time and couldn't believe that waves that good could have only one guy out. I told them "Not anymore." Anyway the waves were in that range at about 4 to 5 feet where you could see the sharks riding in the waves. I assume the sharks were there at other times but at that size you could see them sometimes a few of them together riding along the bottom part of the wave. They would always cutout before the wave broke so I got used to it. I took off on one wave and there was a shark in this one wave which seemed to persist riding it longer than most do but I didn't think anything of it and took off anyway. I had a great ride, getting tubed a couple times and paddled back out. It's not unusual for me to get tubed twice at Kealia but still a good ride and I figured they were impressed because one of them paddled up to me after the wave. I thought he was going to congratulate me on such a great ride which it was but instead he asked me "Did that fish get you?" Initially no clue what he was talking about I answered "What?" He said "Did that fish in that wave get you? When you took off it turned and went straight for your feet. I could have sworn it got you." I was shocked and responded "That was a shark." He asked "A baby shark?" I said "No just a small shark. Probably a gray reef shark and they don't grow real big." Funny I had a pretty good ride but no mention of it but maybe they also got rides like that regularly. No idea who they were and never saw any rides they got but some pretty good surfers came to surf Kauai especially the north shore in the winter. I decided I had enough surf and went in for the day. I think something about the new guys was causing the sharks to behave differently.

[oldmansurfer]

The other time when I was surfing at Kealia alone and a car full of surfer straight from the airport stopped and joined me they all paddled out and were saying "We couldn't believe how much fun you were having all by yourself." I said "Not anymore." After they were out there for a while they said "What happened to the waves? From the beach you were catching one after another good waves but there don't seem to be any now." I had spent 2 hours figuring out and fine tuning the break. There must have been 2 different swells coming in and the less frequent one is the one to catch. You had to line up in this one spot and wait for that one in 6 or 8 waves that came in. It had a different shape a kind of hump in the wave and that was the wave and you had to get into it rapidly then do a hard bottom turn and maybe a speed turn off the top or maybe not then once past that fast breaking section there was about 30 yards of wall to do a bunch of turns of whatever variety you could do. It was a friendly section for just about any turns that I could do. Then at the end of that section there was a flat part and you had to get some speed before you hit that section and pump through it to the inside section where you could very likely get tubed. It had taken me a while to figure all this out but these guys came out and crowded me out of position. They were aggressive mainland surfers and I wasn't used to that type of surfer. I imagine that the other guys I knew would have been very upset at their lack of manners in the surf but I knew they were just off the plane and knew nothing. Anyway I told them you guys pushed me out of my normal lineup and I couldn't catch the good waves from where I was. So they said okay go ahead and we will let you do your thing. I told them what I was doing and showed them the takeoff place and how to make the wave work. Then I caught a wave in and let them have the break. I had a good day already and surfing with a bunch of jerks wasn't going to make me any happier.

[oldmansurfer]

At Kealia about every 2 months there used to be a fast breaking "freight train" right that would show up in the middle just over from the Landing. Most of the regulars (me too) would leave it alone and go surf the main break but a couple guys would go there and get tubed as it was a hollow wave and the first part of it was suitable to getting tubed. I didn't see anyone "making" the wave. No one was riding it to it's end and it looked to me like that should be possible. I got it in my mind to do that and one day paddled over there to 4 foot surf (8 foot faces).

On the first wave I caught by the time I reached the bottom of the wave it has passed me by already. Now pay attention here as it was all a learning process. You might say it closed out on me but I would say I wasn't able to keep up with it. So the next wave I paddled harder and a couple extra paddles as well and go to the bottom but halfway through my bottom turn the wave passed me by again. So the next time it was paddle hard and jam a quick fast bottom turn and that was good but the wave passed me again. So the next time it was paddle hard jam a quick powerful bottom turn and make another quick top turn and that got me onto the wave but then it passed me by again. I realized I needed to do a series of speed turns and especially after that first section there was this long wall that looked like you needed to do speed turns to make it.

Basically I learned how to make speed turns really well on that wave, multiple rapid speed turns like maybe once up and down in a second or two. I leaned forward off the board and toward the shore partly and just moved the board under me and then back up the wave by alternating pressure on front and back foot rapidly. Essentially I was falling off the board in the direction I wanted to go but before I actually fell I brought the board underneath me but then quickly back to the falling position. I have no idea how fast I was going but eventually I made the wave. I was so happy and went off over the end of the wave but the board kept going. I thought about going to the beach but falling onto the sand didn't seem like a good end to the wave. IK could have tried to connect to the inside section inside of the other surfers but I might run into one of them so I turned and headed back out to sea. The next swell coming in caught my board and I continued in a standing up position till my feet hit the water then did this head over heels forward cartwheel. It was so violent I was scared and it never happened to me before so as I tumbled head over heel on the surface of the water I imagined maybe I would be injured. Did about 3 complete head over heels before stopping and sinking down into the water. This was in the days before leashes or if not it was almost guaranteed I would have been injured. No worse for wear but scared and intrigued. It was kind of cool in a way that I could get that kind of speed on a small wave.

I wanted to make some more waves so I came up with a plan to try falling sideways thinking maybe that would be less violent than the head over heels thing. Spinning sideways is a method I used to avoid getting sucked over the falls by waves when I wipe out in the barrel on a shallow reef. So I made the next wave and landed sideways. I spun so fast I was afraid my arms would get ripped off and came up a little bit sore like things had gotten over stretched a bit but basically I was okay again. So I thought okay so the next wave I will dive into the water and it will be similar to diving from a height which I was very familiar with. So the next wave I dove into the water and it was also very rough and what was more scary is I ended up just a couple inches from the bottom. I also felt a bit like the force tweaked my neck a little. So I came up with the idea of landing flat on my back and skipping something I had done on bigger waves. That was the solution. At first I tried skipping two times then trying to sink into the wave but it was still a rough twirling that happened so I tried three and that was the perfect solution. I might have been able to do another skip but at three I could feel a sinking into the water so just let my body spin to slow down

After the three times one of the regular guys paddled over to me and said "You were going 30 miles per hour on that wave." I had no clue so I asked "How could you tell?" He said "because you skipped 3 times." Well I wasn't happy with that answer and I had in my mind just survived a dangerous situation and i wasn't ready for comedy. After I went in I realized they were just acknowledging that I was getting some speed. I still have no idea how fast I was going but suspect around 50 miles per hour because we used to drive a car on the beach and tow someone behind the car on a skim board and it seemed like the violence of wiping out at 50 mph.

At first I used my fast board but after a few days I tried my slow board and found that I could still make a slightly lower percentage of the waves although it's top speed was less and there was nothing I could do to make it go faster and if I quit doing turns it would slow down rapidly. So maybe it was the board to use since it would slow down quicker off the end of the wave but what I did eventually was to stop doing speed turn earlier so I would slow down by the end of the wave.

[oldmansurfer]

Back when I was just out of high school one of my friends managed to get a new surfboard. It was the latest design a "stinger", something I had only heard about and not seen till then. Here it was and I had no clue how he got the board since he had no money as far as I knew. I didn't press him for an answer as to how he got it since I really didn't want to hear it figuring he had done some kind of shady deal. But my friend knew I wanted to try the board out and see how it worked so he offered to let me try it out one day at Kealia Landing.



I surfed on it for about an hour and then decided I wanted my board back so I went in and waited on the beach for my friend to come in. The board was ok but I still preferred my own board. While I was waiting I saw a guy running down the beach from the far side of the beach. I started worrying that maybe this was his board and my friend stole it so I made up my mind that if that was the case I would just hand over the board. As he gets closer I hear him yelling at me and I think Oh my gosh it is his board so I kind of hold it out away from my body so he can take it easily but he stops by me and catches his breath a little and says his friend is drowning and needs help while pointing down the beach to the far side. I guess he was so out of breath from running that I couldn't understand what he was yelling as he ran. I look down at the far side of the beach and there are 4 people in the water so I say "Looks like someone else is already out there helping your friend." He responds "Those guys don't know what they are doing. Come on! Help out my friend he's drowning" motioning me with his arm to follow him and then he runs down the beach so I follow him. At about a third of the way back to where his friend was the guy got completely winded so I continued on by myself.



By the time I get there only 2 people remained in the water so I jump in and paddle out. One was outside the break and the other just inside of the break. I could not tell which one was having problems so when I got to where they could hear me I yelled "Which one of you is having problems?" The guy closest to me, a fit looking haole guy says "Me,Me,Me, I am!" So I put him on my surfboard and start pushing him in. There was a slight current going out right there but I was a strong enough swimmer to overcome that even pushing the board in and swimming behind it. I figure that is why he got into trouble this slight current was more than he could handle. He starts yelling at me "We're not getting closer to the shore!" I tell him calmly "We are." He says "No we aren't. We're hardly moving." I told him to relax and we were getting closer and that he was on the board so he wouldn't drown even if I did. Then I hear the other guy yelling "Help! Help!" So I ask the guy I am pushing in if the other guy was having problems too? He says "Yeah. I swam out to help him and got a cramp in my leg." I screamed "Why didn't you tell me?" Then calmed down and said "I have to leave you and go help that other guy. Just hang on to the board and I will come back and get you once I help the other guy." He was screaming at me that he didn't want to die and that he was going to drown. I pointed out that he had the board and He could float till someone else came for him if I drowned.



I swam out to the other guy who was a big Hawaiian guy. He seemed OK and because he was big he floated well so I asked him if he was in real trouble or just tired. He said he was tired so I told him I would take him in through the surf. I asked if he could hold his breath and he said he could so I told him that we were going to get hit by waves but if he could hold his breath it would be OK. He agreed so I proceeded to tow him into the breaking surf. The waves were only about 2 to 3 feet (4 to 6 foot faces) in that area and not big enough to pound us too hard but would help us get in. I watched and when a wave was coming I would tell him to take a deep breath and then as it hit I would push him up as high as I could and the wave would push him in then I would go get him and make sure he was OK then repeat this till we were well inside the break. By then my friend who had seen me go down the beach came down to find out what was up and paddled out to me. I told him what the problem was and he offered to take the big local guy in on the board he had (my board) so I swam back to my first victim and helped him get the rest of the way in. Actually I reached him at the same time he reached the beach on his own.



The guy who had swam out to help the Hawaiian guy disappeared without saying a word once we got to the beach. I went to the big local guy and asked if he was OK and offered to go call an ambulance or anyone else if he needed. He said he didn't need anything else and that he was so thankful that I helped him, he wanted to give me money for it. I told him not to worry and that if I was in trouble and he could help me I am sure he would have so don't worry about it. He kept saying "Thank you , thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you....etc" I decided to leave before he got his breath and tried to force me to take money so I asked if he was OK again and he said he was and endless thank you's after that and I got my board back from my friend and we went back to the surf.

[oldmansurfer]

Sometimes when the conditions are just right waves make a sound that resembles a gunshot. It only happens when the waves have an A-frame shape and are very hollow. One morning I was out cruising with a bunch of guys up to no good (cutting school) and we were parked somewhere and heard what sounded like a rifle firing at periodic intervals. We all thought it was someone shooting a gun somewhere but one of the guys was a surfer and he said he thought it was surf and not just any surf but really good surf. A brief discussion broke out and we finally decided it was easy enough to prove or disprove this by going to the beach, so we did. Turns out this surfer was right. Kealia had really nice waves breaking. It was a perfect large A-frame break maybe 15 foot faces. I guess when the lip of the wave pitches out and cleanly hits the water and there is not much wind the sound is reflected landward by the wall of the wave and sounds something like a gunshot. I have heard this at night which resulted in me getting up early to go surf really nice waves.

[oldmansurfer]

One day at Kealia I wiped out and ended up getting hit by my board in the calf. It didn't hurt much and I didn't notice any injury so I kept on surfing. A couple waves later I was sitting on my board and noticed some green stuff floating by in the water. I didn't know what it was and caught another wave and was once again sitting on my board in the water waiting for a wave and noticed the green stuff floating by my right leg and the right side of my surfboard. I watched closely and it seemed to be coming out of my leg so I pulled my leg out of the water and looked closely and there was a little hole where the board had poked me. I squeezed my calf and blood came squirting out of the hole. Blood looks green filtered through the water, something I didn't know till then. It continued to bleed for 45 minutes after I came in. I went to the ER because I couldn't get it to quit bleeding but it did quit right when I got to the ER. They cleaned it up and gave me a tetanus shot and some antibiotics and I was back to surfing the next day. This remains the worst injury I have had surfing. Yeah I haven't been injured much.
The scariest injury was at Kealia and I was surfing as usual but there was a group of girls on the beach and it looked to me like they were pointing at me while I was surfing. So I wanted to show off and caught a wave and rode the heck out of it all the way to the beach. I planned to jump off my board onto the sand but what happened was the wave flipped my board upturned it over and it landed on the beach. I was thrown up and came down on my fin (single glassed in fin). There was nothing I could do to change my trajectory so I tried to land with one foot on each side of the board and I did but wasn't able to keep from getting poked painfully by the fin. Fortunately it hit me between my vital areas and did not penetrate. But it sure made me forget about the girls on the beach.

[oldmansurfer]

There was another time when I thought a saw a group of girls on Kealia beach pointing at me. These days I think maybe they were just pointing out how different my surfing was as I did things my own way. I never found out. This time I checked over and over again and no one was surfing while I was and they were pointing while I was surfing so it must have been me that was interesting for whatever reason. I caught a few more waves but waited until I had a really good wave and then went in. I was a shy guy back in those days but if they were thinking I am worth pointing out then I should be able to strike up a conversation with them. I probably knew them all but was too far away to see who they were and too shy to approach any of them in normal situations. So I start walking in their direction and I notice they are pointing at me again but for some reason pointing down toward my feet or something. So I look down and my fly is open and everything is hanging out. Perhaps you newer surfers don't know this but surf shorts were made differently in those days with a huge Velcro fly. The shorts I have now are made with shorter Velcro openings and some have no Velcro just a smaller opening and some have a membrane to keep everything from being exposed. Well shy guy that I was this was horrific and I am sure I turned beet red and turned around and went back surfing till the group of girls went elsewhere. LOL You never know why they are pointing. Maybe they thought I was my brother who was more outgoing than me. LOL I will never know.

[oldmansurfer]

That reminds me of an incident at Wailua the beach closest to my home. I was surfing and there was a girl on the beach who asked my friends who was that surfer (me). They all told her I was one of the best surfers in the state and won the Duke or some other contest. When I came in they introduced me to her and she was a very nice girl. After a while she asked me if I really won the contests? I guess she suspected my answer to her the first time which was a lie after stopping momentarily to realize what my friends had done. I answered the second time truthfully. I didn't like lying and she probably could tell. Anyway we had a good conversation but I was still too shy to take it further than that and she was from the mainland USA on vacation so no long term relationship likely. She had fairly poor eyesight without her glasses and might have mistaken me for the other surfer who was out on that day who was a really great surfer. The only other surfer that day was the kid brother of my classmate and he was truly a great surfer. I saw him once surfing and thought he was Larry Bertlemann who was one of the best pro surfers in those days. Anyway it's nice to have friends who support you. LOL

[oldmansurfer]

I was surfing by myself on a beautiful day at Kealia. The sky was clear the water was clear and there wasn't much wind, nearly perfect conditions. The waves were really nice but small with maybe 3 to 4 foot faces and it was all sets that came in every 5 minutes or so. So four or five waves would come in and then nothing for 5 minutes. I was able to catch 2 waves in the set if I stayed in control of my board and paddled quickly back out. I was in between sets and a shark that was just as long as my surfboard swam under me. The water was clean and I could see it clearly. I was leaning over watching it go by and thinking how well I could see it just like an aquarium and I could see it was a white tip reef shark. Then suddenly I realized my feet were down there with it and I pulled my feet up over the board. The shark had passed completely under me by that point though LOL. I had been surfing for a while so I decided to go in. There was a fisherman on the beach who was the only other person on the beach. I figured maybe his bait was attracting the shark but then again the water is not often this clear so who knows? It's possible sharks swam under me a bunch of times and I never knew it. I asked the fisherman if he ever caught sharks and he said he didn't and asked if that was why I came in and I said "yep".

[oldmansurfer]

I remember another day surfing at the break closest to my home in my second go around of surfing. I was out with another surfer we had both individually shown up to surf Horners the left breaking wave on the lefthand side of the bay. There were waves breaking about 4 feet (8foot faces) and on the inside section was a shallow bowl. There was a slack section before the bowl so you couldn't just ride the wave to the bowl and surf the bowl. It would break in front of you if you did not get some speed to get through the slack section. Too much speed and you would go past the short tubing section, too little speed and it breaks in front of you and ends the wave. The other surfer was just cutting out before the section, but I wanted to ride that section along with the outer part. It took me a few tries but finally figured out the timing sort of. I got barely covered but time was up so I went in before I got tired because it was a couple hundred yards in and I was old and out of shape. Funny thing is I don't recall surfing anywhere that shallow at Horners. It's a deep water reef break no shallow parts that I can recall other than the inside. I surfed a similar situation at a break called Maiili point on Oahu but not that I can recall here at Horners that I have surfed so much. The shallow part is so shallow it's extremely difficult to take off there because of the water sucking up the face but if you are on the wave and already have some speed you can make it through the section and with the right timing get tubed.

[oldmansurfer]

A day I recall from long ago surfing Kealia was a storm swell. There was an A frame peak about 15 to 20 foot faces and it looked like the lefts were better but this was before I became more comfortable with backside on bigger waves. There was only one guy out and he was going left and the good waves were infrequent enough for him to paddle back out and battle for the next wave. And he was a better surfer than me. I decided to ride the rights and on several instances I tried to cross the peak from the left of the peak looking toward the shore going right and he was taking off on the other side of the peak going left. We met in the middle and turned back and he went right and I went left. After a few times he paddled over to me and said "You want to go right?" I said "yes" and he said " I want to go left. Why don't you go high and I go low and we will cross the peak out of each others way?" So that is what we did. It worked out well. I have no idea why I didn't think of that. That A frame though was a good wave for beginners as it was fairly tame, not breaking too fast with huge walls to ride. So good for me.