Surf Is Where You Find It (Revised and Expanded)

The outside Second Reef at the Pipeline showing signs of life. Photo: Jeff Divine

I was awake for an hour when the phone call came, but Darrick’s words made me think I was still asleep and dreaming: “Surf is up, brudda. You need to be here.”

This from the most reliable wave-caller I know. I was awake enough to know that it was September 2. My mind tiptoed around the sound of that message at this time of year. “Where are you?” I asked.

I was looking out the window of my home in Olinda. I had a sweeping view of the north coast of Maui. I couldn’t see any whitewater. Maybe Darrick was on the South Shore.

“I’m right in front of my house and the sets are already ten feet,” he replied calmly. Darrick is always calm with anything surf related.

Darrick lived on the point at Sunset Beach. My brain stirred toward clarity. Still, looking down the hill, the north shore of Maui was devoid of any surf at all. I lurched back toward confusion: Is he seeing things, or am I? The coast looked just like it always looks during the summer: flat.

“Brudda, this is a serious swell, straight out of the west with a twenty-six-second interval and lots of waves in the sets; it has Pipe written all over it,” he continued.

That explained why nothing was showing on Maui’s north shore. A straight west swell is blocked by Moloka’i and West Maui. An interval of twenty-six seconds between waves, however, is significant, and rare.

The earth’s atmosphere has regions of high and low pressure. Typically an area of low pressure, a weather disturbance, will slide off of the coast of Siberia and head eastward into the North Pacific Ocean. Wind from the high-pressure areas surrounding it flow into this depression. As the wind blows over the surface of the ocean, it creates ripples. The ripples allow the wind to get a better grip on the surface, making bigger ripples. If the wind continues to blow, the ripples grow into small waves or wind chop. If the wind increases, it drives the chop ahead of it and piles the chop on top of itself. In this manner wave trains are formed, grow, and acquire a direction of travel. If the wind continues to blow, eventually they form huge waves. The waves are a result of a transfer of energy by the wind from the air to the water.

The distance between waves, known as the wave interval or period, is determined by the amount of energy transferred from the wind to the ocean. It is an important factor in determining the strength and size of the waves when they reach shore. The wave period is also a determining factor in the wave speed. A long interval indicates a lot of energy, and these swells are able to travel long distances before their energy dissipates.

These weather disturbances are constantly photographed by satellites and tracked by meteorologists who monitor them. As the storm tracks eastward across the Pacific, it enters an area where the winds are aimed directly at the Hawaiian Islands.

As swells pass under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric buoys anchored in an arc several hundred miles from Hawai’i, the buoys record their passage as well as their height and wave period. Buoy reports are broadcast on weather band channels mainly to keep ships and boats apprised of current weather conditions for ocean safety. Although reports of rising swell activity are at minimum an inconvenience for ship captains, for surfers listening, both heights and wide intervals are welcome news.

An interval of sixteen to seventeen seconds indicates a swell of significance, regardless of the swell height. Surfers know this is a ground swell with wave energy deep in the water; the waves will be big when they break. Conversely, the energy of a wind swell runs mainly on the surface. The storm generating the swell is much closer; there is less energy in the swell to travel any distance before it dies out. The wave period of a wind swell is shorter and the wave power is not as strong as that of waves coming from ground swells. A buoy report of a twenty-six-second interval comes as a shock to most surfers, especially the ones who pay attention.

This report spurred me to action. I phoned my brother, Victor, to give him the surf report. We decided to get over to O’ahu as soon as possible. We were in a frenzy from that moment forward, but we had a clear goal in mind. We both had visions of solid North Shore waves after a long summer of dinky surf.

By 10:00 a.m. we were ready to drive to the airport. We lived high up on the side of Haleakala and it took a while to get to the bottom of the hill. We picked up Junior on the way to the airport. Victor and I have known Chris Junior’ Vandervoort since he was an infant. He grew up into a fine young man and a great surfing partner in our surf adventures around the Valley Isle. Of all the surfers on Maui that day, possibly only Junior, Victor, and I knew there was some serious surf to be had on O’ahu, a short hop away.

We arrived at Kahului Airport, unloaded Chris’s and Victor’s boards, parked the car, and checked in for the flight. My boards were on Oahu where I had left them at the end of last winter’s surf season. Here it was early fall, just out of summer, and the excitement of winter surf was on us once again.

Flying out over the reefs off Kanaha Beach, we remained surprised by how few waves were showing there. We knew that a westerly swell wouldn’t show on this part of Maui’s north shore, but that only heightened our excitement. A swell from 270 to 280 degrees is one of the best directions for Hale’iwa, Sunset, and the Pipeline. There would not be even a ripple at Kanaha, and the sets could still be ten feet at Sunset.

We could hardly sit still for the twenty-minute flight to Honolulu. We became even more antsy when we saw faint corduroy lines of swell marching down the Moloka’i Channel heading straight east. At last the jet lined up for the approach into Honolulu airport, and we had to settle back into our seats for the landing.

We collected our baggage, got a rental car, loaded up, and headed for the North Shore. Once clear of Pearl City, the roads were less congested and we pushed the speed up as high as we dared. We didn’t want a policeman to pull us over for speeding, but we wanted to get there fast. We passed through Wahiawa and climbed the last grade at Helemano, then the road headed back downhill through the pineapple fields.

From that vantage point we could see the North Shore; there was the whitewater, and like in the dead of winter, we got that funny feeling in the pits of our stomachs. Avalanche, outside Hale’iwa, was breaking and the wind looked perfect out of the east. We were stoked. Up until that moment we had been going on the eyes and word of another person and traces of what we wanted to believe. This was different. We saw for ourselves that there was indeed surf of substance and we were going to get some of it.

We headed straight for the Pipe house, barely able to contain our excitement. The drive was unusual. Normally on a swell like this the road would be teeming with cars all carrying surfboards stacked on top. The highway was empty, so I supposed the surfers just hadn’t heard about the swell yet.

We parked and ran to the front gate. It was strange: The right-of-way was empty and the house looked deserted. I unlocked the front door and went through to open the sliding door on the beach side. I guess I expected the yard and bench to be full of surfers like any normal Pipe day, so I was surprised to find Sato-san and Garrett McNamara the only ones there. Looking out toward the lineup I saw only one guy out. Maybe the waves were no good.

Then I noticed all the guys with their boards at the water’s edge waiting for a lull to paddle out. Twenty guys were poised to move at the first sign of a break in the relentless sets. I quickly changed into my surf trunks, grabbed my board, and headed out the gate.

From the top of the right-of-way, aided by that little bit of elevation, I saw what looked like a lull in the sets and ran down the beach. As I jumped in the water I figured everyone else had seen the same lull coming as they all dove in as well. Some of the surfers were launching way up the beach from in front of Off the Wall.

I noticed that the beach was gone. The big, wide summertime beach that piles up in front of the Pipeline had already been eroded away by this swell. Ordinarily during the first swells of winter the beach is huge. This causes a backwash problem in the lineup of Pipe. Each winter it takes several big swells to wash out the sand. But this swell had likely started sometime late the night before, and in about ten to twelve hours already had moved many thousands of yards of sand. That, combined with the reported twenty- six-second interval, meant that this was a particularly powerful swell.

Photo: Jeff divine

Looking for a break in the sets to time a successful paddle out is never an easy task. Photo: Jeff Hornbaker

The paddle out at the Pipe on a ten-foot day is a combination of timing, paddling power, and a lot of luck. The surfer waits on the shore anticipating a lull, jumps into the rip running down the beach like river rapids and tries to breach the shorebreak before the next set comes. The rip takes him down the beach toward Sunset. If he can’t slip through the little channel between Pipe and ‘Ehukai, there’s little likelihood he’ll make it out into the lineup.

At the moment I hit the water there were two dozen surfers paddling furiously to penetrate the shorebreak. A successful technique requires the surfer to paddle up to the oncoming whitewater and duck-dive underneath it without losing forward momentum. Emerging beyond the wall of foam, he starts paddling madly again as the suction tries to drag him backward. One trick is to get a good jump when entering the water by running fast down the beach and launching as far out as possible. Another trick is to make balanced, clean duck dives.

Everyone was paddling as hard as they possibly could, ducking under wave after wave and paddling some more. I must have gone under at least a dozen waves. I should have been somewhere in that lull I thought I had seen. Instead, the whitewater coming in didn’t seem to be letting up. I was hoping for a break, just one smaller wave that didn’t break so I could go over the top and gain some ground. That’s the purpose of timing the lull just right, to pass through the shallow inside shorebreak when the waves are at their least frequent.

After more than a dozen waves without any lapse, I stole a glance back in to get my bearings. I was completely shocked to find myself only ten feet from shore. Added to that, the rip had taken me all the way down past the lifeguard tower at ‘Ehukai. I hadn’t penetrated an inch in that sideways sweep beyond what I acquired from my initial launch jump off the beach. All that paddling had gained me precisely nothing. When I saw that I was almost down to Pupukea, I knew I had no realistic choice other than to turn around and go in to the beach.

On the beach strung out ahead of me I saw all the other surfers who had tried to paddle out. No one had made it. I saw ‘Adam 12’ and joined him. We started the long walk back to the Pipeline, where we would try to paddle out again. He said this was his fourth attempt and if he didn’t make it this next time he was giving up; the long walk in the soft sand was wearing him out. He told me some other guys had been trying to get out for more than an hour and hadn’t been able to.

Liam, Adam 12 said, had made it out during the only lull in the last two hours and was still the only guy out. Just as we were in front of the beach park, I thought I saw a lull in the sets and told Adam that I was going to try again from right there. He looked at me like I was nuts; no one paddled out to Pipe on a big day from there.

I dove in and started paddling hard. I got a break and managed to penetrate somewhat. Finally, I made it. I was all the way down past Pupukea at Gas Chambers, but I was outside the surfline. I began the long paddle back to the Pipe watching the tubes that lured me onward.

When at last I reached the lineup I paddled over and sat next to Liam. “Where is everyone?” he asked.

“No one can make it out; they can’t get through the shorebreak,” I told him. “I just barely did and had to paddle up from Gas Chambers. So don’t go in ‘cuz you’ll never get back out.”

“OK,” said Liam. “There’s way more good waves out here than you and I could ever ride, so we might as well stay out till dark.”

A set was stacking up on the horizon, so we both paddled for position. I got into the right spot and started paddling for the first good one I saw. It was a good ten- to twelve-foot wave and looked clean. I stroked hard to catch it. It jacked up like only the Pipeline can, and I found myself in a bad place, hung up on the lip and not penetrating down the face. I slammed on the brakes, sat up, and back paddled to stop myself. I only just managed to keep from getting sucked over as the lip pitched and threw out.

I turned around, saw what was behind me and nearly panicked. Another ten- to twelve-foot wave was bearing down on me. I paddled like crazy, hoping I wasn’t going to be too late. A sense of dread engulfed me; I could think of nothing worse than being caught inside at the Pipe with a big swell like this. I stroked up to the base of the approaching wave and very carefully made as perfect a duck dive as I could, concentrating completely on sinking the board on a level plane. I knew one slip would end in disaster.

Duck-diving through the Pipe wave is a lesson in the necessity of perfection. The base of the wave is so thick and powerful that any small flaw in penetration leads quickly back into the roaring pit. The sheer terror of those few moments when one is pulled back against all hope is the worst thing I’ve felt. I had been there too many times. I didn’t want to ever be near that place again. Thankfully, my duck dive was clean.

I surfaced on the other side only to be confronted by another wave of equal size and bearing down on me in the same remorseless way. I had the advantage of being slightly farther outside, but I was still not in a safe place. I paddled for my life again. The duck dive pulled me through once again, but there was still another wave behind coming at me. I managed to paddle over the top of this one, but I was shaky and out of breath. Cresting that wave, I could see not only one more wave as big and perfect as the others that preceded it but also, to my astonishment, what seemed like an infinite number stacked up behind that one.

My confidence began to come back as I paddled over the next two waves and looked for a good position to attempt to catch one of these beautiful waves. I saw my wave, took a deep breath, spun around, and started to stroke hard to make the takeoff. It was a repeat of the first try. I couldn’t penetrate the lip and had to slam on the brakes again, pulling back at the very last moment.

Knowing what was behind, I didn’t hesitate. I put my head down and paddled as hard as I could. It was an instant replay, exactly the same scenario I had just endured. Again I experienced the terror of almost getting sucked back as I dove through the next few waves, then the increasing relief as I gained ground and could paddle over the top of the waves behind.

Then spotting my wave and seeing I was in position, I spun around and was determined to catch it. Once more I found myself hung in the lip and not getting into that wave either. Again I had to paddle like mad, duck-dive through several waves, get back outside only to find yet more waves coming.

Twenty to twenty-five waves had already passed me. I couldn’t remember experiencing a set like this at the Pipe before. I saw yet another perfect wave coming and was absolutely determined to catch it. I paddled early and finally felt myself slipping into the wave. What a feeling of relief that brought. The accumulated fear from all those previous desperate moments had stacked up to take away my sense of identity. I began to come back into myself.

I stood up into my usual takeoff crouch and took the drop. It was the typical Pipe drop, late and thrilling. I carried my speed into the turn at the bottom, cutting the corner as the lip came down. I pulled up into the spinning barrel. All that effort to get there from Maui, the struggle to paddle out, the frustration mixed with terror of missing those first waves and having to escape the others behind, all of it paid off in that instant of slotting myself into the tunnel.

In that moment I had entered another realm. The roaring sounds of the wave crashing were suddenly silent. My fears and worries slipped away like droplets sheering off of glass. My sense of awareness became so acute in that nearly frozen timelessness I could see individual drops of water falling from the ceiling above. I was at one with the universe. A smile spread across my face as the wave shot me out of the barrel in a mist of spray that tickled and stung my face and back.

Paddling back out to the lineup I was amazed that the set was still going. I stroked hard thinking maybe I could get out there in time to catch another wave. Instead, after what must have been more than thirty waves, the set finally took a break. I paddled out to Liam and asked him if all the sets were like that. He answered that they were. We agreed that this was as pumping a swell as we had ever seen at the Pipeline. We were happy. We knew we were blessed to be sharing something special together.

It was a long lull, and we soon saw a few guys finally make it out. They were a little shell-shocked from the pounding they had taken just trying to paddle out. Some commented that they were already worn out before they had even caught any waves. It made me wonder which situation makes a surfer more fatigued, when he is catching the waves or when the waves are catching him.

We all surfed until it was too dark to see, not knowing if the swell would still be there in the morning. We wanted to make sure we got enough today in case it was gone tomorrow.

When at last I went in and walked up to the house in the twilight, I could still hear the waves booming behind me and feel their impact through the sand under my feet. I found my brother and Chris back from a great session at Sunset with Dennis Pang. They had found nonstop sets there as well and had surfed their fill. I don’t even remember dinner, just a sleep that night filled with visions of endless sets stacked up to the horizon.

The next morning was, if anything, bigger than the day before, and the sets had as many waves as the previous day. On the first day the sets were pounding into First Reef, on the second day the sets had grown bigger and the outside waves were stacking on Second Reef Pipe. A takeoff at Second Reef could set up a surfer for a nice run through the inside First Reef. Coming into the regular takeoff section from outside and behind running at full speed is the ideal situation to ride Pipe. The outside takeoff shifts around and is hard to line up; the drop is also bigger and longer but not as critical, so there is time to find the ideal position at full speed.

The problem at big Pipeline is that a surfer sitting on the First Reef will discover that the bigger sets will flank any takeoff position. These sets then generate a current into the pit that makes sitting near the shoulder almost impossible. The only forgiving factor is that the Second Reef waves are, relatively speaking, a little mushy on the outside. There is a chance of diving underneath them without worry about the shallow reef.

The surfer who gets caught outside and dragged back into the First Reef is in the worst place possible at the Pipeline. With ten- to twelve-foot sucking barrels pitching out as far as they are tall and not a lot of water between the surfer and the reef, the only recourse is to throw oneself on the mercy of sea. At this point the choices are limited. Arms wrapped around the head offer some feeble protection. Eyes open or closed makes little difference. The surfer is virtually powerless to do much more than curl up in a ball and hope not to hit the bottom headfirst. This is not a situation to take lightly. The chilling specter of death haunts the Pipeline reef. More surfers have been killed there than at any other surf spot.

During Darrick’s epic west swell, Max Medeiros and I got caught way too deep and too far inside on one set. We had no choice but to try to paddle around the left side of the Second Reef peak. We made it under the first few waves. Then we came up on the other side of a wave and found the next one had already broken outside of us. I didn’t even try to duck-dive under the mountain of soup coming at us. I just jumped off the side. Max tried a duck dive, and when I came up he was gone, whisked away by the powerful whitewater.

I was helpless, dead in the water with my leash stretched to its maximum. I dove down when the whitewater of the next wave approached and tried to let myself be pulled by the leash. If I had tried to anchor myself, I would have found myself stuck on the bottom, held there by the tension on the leash while my surfboard was pulled by a wave on the surface.

Each wave was carrying me further in and away from the safety of the deeper water on the Second Reef. My leash looked like a spaghetti noodle, stretched so far I couldn’t even see my board when the wave was already thirty feet past me. Each time I went under, I could see I was being drawn further inside.

I was running out of breath after going under so many waves. The thought of being sucked into the inside reef was something I didn’t even want to consider. I was running out of options.

Finally I came up from one wave and was surprised to find there wasn’t another mountain of whitewater bearing down on me. As tired as I was, I got my board back under me and started paddling hard back out. I duck-dived under the next wave and a few more after it. At last I found myself far enough outside and in the channel where I could stop for a moment and catch my breath.

I looked around and saw that the set had wreaked carnage on the lineup. Most of the pack was gone, washed away and inside. A few of the guys who had been sitting far enough on the shoulder had managed to escape around the side of the set and were laying on their boards as I was, gasping for air.

When Max eventually paddled back out, I asked him what had happened. He just shook his head and said, “Oh man, that wave just dragged me almost to the beach before it let me go. Eh bra, I thought I was going to drown.”

Again we surfed almost until sunset, but this time I made the right choice and went in before it got too dark. There is a danger in waiting too late to go in on west-facing shores, especially when the waves are big. Looking out to sea for the last wave, one faces where the light is brightest. There is still some light after the sun sinks below the horizon. Visibility is worsened when one turns back toward shore and faces into the darkest part of what little light is left. I have paddled right over the falls in such situations. With the waves at serious size, that is not a wise move.

Victor and Chris had gone out and surfed at Makaha with Dennis Pang that second day. Sunset Beach was closing out on the big sets. The west direction of the swell was a good angle for Makaha. They had a great time with epic West Side waves.

The next morning the swell was still holding at full strength. There may have been a bit fewer waves per set but only by a little. The size was still the same. Where the first day the wave size had been a conservative ten to twelve feet, the second and third days were easily ten to fifteen feet. Likely some waves were bigger. That is big Pipeline by anyone’s standards.

It was the strongest west swell I ever witnessed at the Pipe. I had seen some bigger and some better shaped, and some that lasted longer, but never in my memory was there a swell with so many waves per set. The wave interval on the buoy reports held at over twenty seconds for all three days.

This was a result of a very large fetch a long distance away, and nothing between the storm center and the Hawaiian Islands to confuse the swell train. With the direction and size, it was too big for Sunset and almost too big for Hale’iwa, although I heard there were some good waves there.

It was a perfect swell at the Pipe. All the local Pipe guys were there: Max, Derek and Michael Ho, ‘Johnny Boy’ Gomes, ‘Larry Boy’ Rios, Liam, Tony Moniz, everyone, the North Shore guys, the West Side guys, the Town guys, the East Side guys, you name ’em, they were there. None of the out-of-town people were in the Country yet. It was a local-boys-only swell.

This was the Mother-of-All-Pipeline swells. I was glad to have been there from beginning to end.