A friend of a friend is in Hawaii (this seems to happen a lot) and she wanted to go see the waves on the North Shore because there were 15-20ft swells. So, we ventured up there last Wednesday. We stopped at my favorite Acai bowl spot, Hale’iwa bowls for a quick lunch, and then tried to view turtles at Laniakea. Turns out that during high tide and high swells there isn’t much room left for turtles, so there weren’t any out to play.
Then we ventured up to Sunset beach where she was told there would be a lot of surfers. However, on our way there we passed a beach park that was really active. We kept going anyway, but there was next to no one at sunset beach… so we backtracked to that busy beach and found street parking. This turned out to be the Bonzai Pipeline beach (also known as Ehukai beach). There were still only two surfers and two boogey borders and a ton of spectators. But, the waves were super impressive and fun to observe. The surfers are really far off from shore, so even as good as my zoom lens is, these are cropped which adds to the blurriness.
The surfers that were there did not surf a lot… there could be a million reasons why, but those first few pictures were a lucky grab from basically right when we sat down. So I took probably a million pictures of the waves, trying to capture the essence just right. Here are some pictures of just waves.
The white thing on this one’s head is a helmet.
This gives you better perspective of just how far away they are. There is still a lot of sand you don’t see.
Here’s a boogey boarder.
The waves created so much splash mist it looks like it’s raining.
What a sight to see. 10/10 recommend experiencing this once in your life. The swells don’t come often right now, I keep checking to see when the next one will be and it won’t be until well into November. I’m hoping Brian can make one day work, it’s just outstanding to watch. Glad Anna was there to push me to go see this one!
I recorded some video and captured good waves, you’ll see a boogey boarder at 30 ish seconds in.
