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!