Swells – SarahRuthSeeks

Brian and I decided to take an easy beach day on Sunday, so I messaged Pat and Jeanie to see if they were around to hang out (I like to be social and Brian will just fall asleep on me). They were, so we set up camp with them and Pat took us out sailing. Compared to when Jess and I went, the seas were a bit rougher because there was higher winds. This should mean faster travel… except… ended up hitting reef quite a bit because we were heavier and the tide was low. We tacked a bunch of times trying to get out there.

We also brought along Kike, a neurosurgeon. He was playing backseat driver quite a bit which made for an entertaining ride. Regardless we made it to the Mokes! And made our way back to Queen’s baths. We borrowed water booties for our feet to get back there and it was definitely rough walking. Highly recommend stiffer soles, but we made it work. Brian’s essentially fell completely apart by the end.

This following picture is the only picture I have of us from being actually at the Queen’s baths…

Because the wave swells were so high they knocked us from the littler bath into the big bath (you can see a better picture of what I’m talking about with Jess and I actually in the baths in my other post. The smaller bath is to the right in the picture of me and Jess in the bigger one) . The waves came right over the rock wall and hit us really hard! I knocked into the rock wall behind me after the first and then got out because I wasn’t going to tempt fate twice. Well, Brian and Pat stayed in for a second wave and they both got pushed back into the big pool. Brian lost his glasses temporarily, thankfully Kike dove and found them… and Brian is pretty banged up on his legs and one shoulder (pictured). I have some road rash on the back of my leg.

Anyway, lesson learned that you’re only one bad decision away from being one of those “stupid tourists” and that you can’t mess with mother nature! I’d like to go back, ideally, when things are calmer and sit and enjoy the spot for a bit… interestingly, after those two huge waves we didn’t see many big ones while we were looking for the glasses. I wasn’t interested in finding out if it was a “one off”.

Our adventure wasn’t over yet. We walked around the other side down a short path just to check it out.

Nothing too exciting. We decide it’s time to head back to shore. Before we do, Pat’s firefighter instinct decides to pick up two girls (no older than 13 yo) who decided to swim out to the mokes and looked like there was no way they were getting back. They were sprawled out on the beach. The whole way home, they talked about how strong of swimmers they are… Brian and I talked about how even at our fittest we wouldn’t attempt that swim. Anyway, here are the four adults on our way back (the two girls are in front)

We had quite the adventure, more than we bargained for, but that’s life sometimes.

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.

Sail to the Mokes Adventure take 2

North Shore Waves