BIG SURF

Aloha! The big excitement on Kauai and I think on all the other islands as well would have to be the huge swell we have been hit with. The north shores have seen wave heights of 40 feet or better in a lot of locations. Our local paper even said that at Kings Reef they were seeing some sets coming in at better than 60 feet! Kings Reef is located outside of Hanalei Bay. All of our local newscasts originate from Oahu so most of the surf shots were from there although they did show a good number from Maui at a place called Jaws as well. The majority of tonights newscast was taken up by the Eddie Aikau surf contest. It is held at Waimea Bay on Oahu when the conditions are just right. The waves have to be big at least 25 feet or better or they won't go but they won't go if the conditions are too dangerous either. Guess todays swell filled the bill perfectly as the contest was held! The newscast said that close to 30,000 people showed up to watch. I can't imagine the bottleneck that that many people must have created. All of the north shore on Oahu is served by a two lane road and today they said it was one long parking lot. The people they interviewed on the news said they left Honolulu before dawn and still had to park and walk more than 5 miles to the beach! The short video I posted today was taken yesterday morning at the lighthouse and Anini. Anini beach is the calmest beach on the north shore and most of the time you can find safe swimming there even when the ocean is booming but yesterdays swell had a lot of rogue waves in it as you will see in the video. The water level would raise dramatically in just seconds and if a person wasn't paying attention they would have found themselves getting soaked. If it was this dangerous at Anini with its large fringing reef can you imagine the chance a person would be taking walking on a beach without a reef to protect it!

SPAGETTI FOR DINNER

Aloha! I'm not holding out much hope for my blog today. When you are reduced to putting what you had for supper down as the title that might just be a hint as to how exciting our day really was! I don't have a good excuse for sitting at home all day. The weather here was perfect...around 80 with light trades. There is a pretty good sized swell hitting the north shore now with wave heights of 20 feet or better and our car is full of gas so we could have made the short trek out to watch the waves but I opted instead to sit on the lanai and watch the grass grow! At least Jackie managed to get my hair cut so the day wasn't a total loss. The weathermen say there are two larger swells heading our way with the last one being the largest of the two. They are predicting wave heights of close to 40 feet with this swell. Only problem is the storms that are producing these swells are supposed to start hitting our little island this evening starting around midnight and continuing thru the weekend bringing heavy rain and strong winds. You can also bet they will bring forth a few I told you so's from Jackie as she wanted to take advantage of today's beautiful weather by going to the beach! I had better hope that the weather guys are wrong and tomorrow will be as beautiful as today or Jackie will be giving me an earfull! The video I posted was taken yesterday at Anini. It has a pretty good clip of a magnificent snake eel...this guy was about 3 feet long. Our book says eels of this variety are rarely seen.

IS IT REALLY DECEMBER???

Aloha! I'm having a little problem coming up with something to blog about but I guess when you spend your days at home playing on the computer or napping what else can you expect although there were a couple of exciting breaks in our routine with both being listening to the Boise State womens basketball games. They played UNLV on Saturday, then WSU on Sunday. Boise State won both games and now they are 7 and 0. The WSU game was very exciting to listen to. The Cougars led by 10 or 12 points at one time in the first half but Boise State battled back and only trailed by one at the half. The second half was played in much the same manner only it was Boise that jumped out to a 10 or 12 point lead with WSU battling back. The Lady Broncos were up to the challenge and ended up winning the game by 4 points, 68 to 64. Our niece Kinzi played very well in both games and its not just her proud uncle saying so. The radio announcer was very impressed with Kinzi's game and in the coaches comment after the game the coach talked about the great minutes he got from his freshmen. Their next game is this Friday at Oregon. It is an away game so once again it will just be on the radio. The weather on Kauai has improved a great deal since my last post. We were having flash flood warnings then but now we are back to our normal winter weather of clouds, brief rain showers and temps in the upper 70's. Our weather guy was saying we have 3 huge swells heading our way with the first arriving tomorrow. Wave heights are predicted to be 20 feet or better. The last swell is predicted for this weekend and it should be the largest with wave heights of maybe 30 feet or better. Jackie and I are hoping we can make it to the beach to watch the show...surf that big is really something to see! I will have to post a rerun video for you. I will try to find one of the grandkids...hope you like it!