Surfing Waves

http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/3439 ... ign=buffer

New visitor industry slogan? Seems like it's the thing lately and since so many seem to want to do that maybe we should just start promoting it to attract more visitors?

not all surfers are swimmers.
as strange as that sounds ive seen some surfers struggling in the water. i mean normal conditions in water
and as for swimmers( be responsible to yourself)

there was a movie , a kung fu one quote( i believe it was: kid with the golden arm)
quote
to attack an enemy without knowing his strength is foolish, people who are that foolish do not deserve to live.

and really i do not wish to speak like the quote above. but you can add that to those that didnt learn the conditions and so forth.

DreamSurf wrote:not all surfers are swimmers.
as strange as that sounds ive seen some surfers struggling in the water. i mean normal conditions in water
and as for swimmers( be responsible to yourself)

Long ago there wasn't too much of that because there were no leashes and if you surfed you lost your board and had to retrieve it. However one of the breaks I surfed at there were 2 brothers who could not swim who surfed there and one of the rules of that break was if either of them lost their board and you were near it you had to bring the board back out to them. Typically at most breaks you did this because you would hope the other surfer would do this also but if you didn't there was no backlash. But at that one break monitored by all the same guys you had to or they would force you to. You could let everyone elses board go but boards ridden by the two brothers had to be brought back out. When I first surfed there they told me this and I would do it but one time I got caught by a set and lost my board and the other board and the other board was no longer anywhere near me so I just paddled back out and everyone screamed at me to go get the board....so I did.

Oh wow, what a strange rule. Peer pressure!

BaNZ wrote:Oh wow, what a strange rule. Peer pressure!

The regulars were usually the only ones surfing there and they were all friends who were born in the area grew up there and surfed there. If you didn't want to get hassled you had to comply with their rules. They also had an unusual tradition there which wasn't a rule. If anyone saw a shark which in general means the fin sticking out of the water they would yell "Shark!" and everyone would get out of the water. One of the guys had a watch and they would watch and wait till no one saw a shark for 20 or 30 minutes then the guy with the watch would tell everyone it was ok to get back in the water. After doing this a few times I was finally overcame by how silly that was and refused to come back in. I would thank everyone for going in and letting me have all the waves and thank the sharks for showing up and helping out. I figured when you can see the shark, you know where it is and they were always outside of the lineup. When you can't see them that is when you don't know where they are and they could be right under you. This place was in a bay with a stream and next to a harbor and not known for clean water. Now I hear that many of the surfers there consider this break a party wave break where everyone catches the same wave so unless you are on one end or the other you just go straight in. It definitely wasn't that way back then.

oldmansurfer wrote:Long ago there wasn't too much of that because there were no leashes and if you surfed you lost your board and had to retrieve it.

It always amazes me that the surfboard leash was actually invented in 1970. It seems like such an obvious piece of equipment that it kind of amazes me that it took so long for surfers to figure it out. If there were no surf leash today, you could probably travel to Europe and find mile after mile of pristine, unsurfed coastline.

It wasn't that no one thought of it, but the technology wasn't there. Big heavy boards tied to the end of something that had no 'give' and you just pulled your knee or leg out of place. No Velcro either!

http://www.coastalwatch.com/surfing/138 ... he-legrope

Warning Signs and precautionary videos won't matter. Stupid is as Stupid does. The state is losing their butt off a lawsuit from this mainlander teen that got sucked down the blow hole and died. The lawsuit claims the state didn't do enough to warm of the hazards. Ummmm........ he climbed over two locked gates and fences that had warning signs not to cross. And after that he straddled the blow hole.

How many people we tell to start on a long(er) board, and they end up getting a good deal used shortboard. Or others that are "looking for 4 to 10 foot waves "? ( or challenge 3-4 meters ). 4-6 foot in most places in the world is way way different in Hawaii. That's why some visiting surfers get in way over their head literally.

Hawaiian surfers are like auxiliary lifeguards. They help out lots of people in trouble including other surfers. The blowhole...... yeah maybe they should just dynamite it and solve that problem permanently. On Kauai there was a blowhole that shot so far up in the air that it damaged the sugar cane they were trying to grow there so some one blew it up. They left a smaller one that I guess is too small for people to fall into it or maybe we don't have as many idiots visiting as Oahu does.

waikikikichan wrote:Stupid is as Stupid does.

This genius was one sneaker wave away from death.

Man swims dangerously close to lava zone in Hawaii.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Man-swims-dangerously-close-to-lava-zone-in-Hawaii-10915907.php

What's with people thinking Hawaii is a good place to swim on a tour of the islands, I mean, does no one know they have some of the most dangerous rips and beaches in the world?
I wouldn't swim anywhere in Hawaii without asking a lifeguard what the beach is like, looks can be deceiving

Any island deep in any ocean ie Hawaii and Indonesia in particular gain their long fetch swells from thousands of miles away,.

A flat benign beach can be transformed into a heaving monster surf when a swell train arrives. Since accurate forecasting these can predicted and havoc avoided. The naive swimmer may not notice and be caught when the unbeknownst swell (to them) hits.

If they are not surf savvy , then the wave free water of the rip looks the place to be. Happens all the time even at patrolled beaches. Often the swimmers get quite snakey when told to bath in the designated areas.
Tourists and capability deluded swimmers often keep going back to the same danger areas
Huge number of drowning here in Australia this summer.

jaffa1949 wrote:Often the swimmers get quite snakey when told to bath in the designated areas.

I still feel it is my duty to check on swimmers; especially in the stretch from Kuta to Seminyak where there are not only a lot of tourist swimmers who paddle around far out back of the lineup, but a stretch of some of the most unpredictable and freakishly strong rips and longshore currents when they do spring up out of seemingly nowhere. If someone looks like they are a potential casualty (drunk, red faced, flapping around, otherwise bad swimming form) I also feel it is my duty to tell them to go back to the beach even though my message is almost never received well (depending on the degree of red faced-ness my message is delivered with parallel bluntness...."Go back to the beach or you will drown" might not what they want to hear but might be just what they need to hear......). Anyway, I do my duty even if it means taking it right on the head from Mr. Red Face.........I sleep well at night.

Thankfully in New Zealand majority have had swimming lessons to some extent which is a bonus but you still get the people swimming dangerously out back or trying to body surf waves where you want to surf /:

It's not the locals we're so concerned about, it's the stupid tourist who don't respect / know the power of the ocean.
( 2 more idiots at "China Walls" surf break on Oahu South-East side )

Interesting article in an Australian paper today on drowning

http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/drow ... u85c6.html

We lose rock fishermen that way!