If you want to check out some big wave surfing, check this site tomorrow at your appropriate timezone.
The Eddie is held at Waimea Bay every three years or so, depending on how big the waves are.
I’ve been to Waimea Bay when the big waves are breaking, it’s a pretty awesome site. The ground shakes under your feet as the waves break onshore.
It’s named in honor of Eddie Aikau, a legendary big wave surfer and lifeguard here.
He was on the Hokulea, a replica Polynesian voyaging canoe, when it capsized 20 miles or so off the island of Lanai. He paddled out on his surfboard to get help for the crew. That was the last anyone ever saw of him.
It spawned a local saying here “Eddie would go”, when dealing with something difficult or dangerous.
Must be good getting the old events back on! Also big wave surfing is for crazy people, I watch Nathan Florence on Odysee and some of the waves those guys surf are f-ing scary. Apparently his brother John John is favourite to win The Eddy.
Nathan broke a vertebra in his back last week getting wiped out on Jaws.
It would be nice to go see it in person, but Kamehameha highway along the North Shore is just two lanes so it’ll be jammed with traffic, plus parking’s a bitch.
I hadn’t heard about his brother getting hurt at Jaws. That stuff usually makes the local news around here. Hope he recovers OK.
He was filming at the time, here’s the video of it happening on Odysee, around 9 minutes for the wave. Apart from him holding his back for a second after getting rescued he seemed a bit dazed but alright:
Here’s an article where he shares the news of the diagnosis:
One of the problems with the Eddie is there’s not enough room at Waimea Bay to handle all the people who show up. Looks like those people weren’t in the designated spectator area.
The ocean’s a bitch who takes no prisoners.
Also had a local 14 year old fall out of tree. He’s in critical condition at a local hospital.
Underwater is very pleasant even when it’s going bananas on the surface. You just bob up and down a bit. I was diving under a cliff face years ago during a choppy day and calmly watching the waves slam against the rocks up above. It was a bit of a swim to get around the cliff to the beach with the current though.
Not end of days choppy like it gets at those monster wave sites all the same! But I heard divers say that during the Thai tsunami they were off shore and just thought the currents were a bit weird.
Back when I was free diving, when weighted properly, I could achieve neutral buoyancy at around 30 feet or so. Unfortunately I didn’t have the lung capacity to remain there very long.
Even at more shallow depths, I would just hang on to some coral or other structure on the bottom and just zen out.
Yeah, I prefer shallow diving and snorkelling to the deeper stuff where it gets a bit gloomy and monotone. Give me a coral reef any day, but even off the coast of Scotland shallower dives among the rocks has a mesmerizing amount of sea life.
One of my favourite zen moments was ‘surfing’ a current coming over a reef when I looked to my side and a barracuda was doing the same thing, holding its position in the current. We looked at each other for a moment and then both carried on surfing the current. There was definitely something communicated between us.
