Waimea Bay

Um, let- let's just say a little dip in, in energy in those sort of ELO years and, and it's no surprise.

Like, you, you, you've got fucking surfers or at least you've got a, a sports admin guy running the joint in Crosby, and then you've got Starkey who fucking literally paddles out Waimea Bay, spends the entire Hawaiian winter on his blue Al Chapman just riding in on the West Peak.

[laughs]

Like, he knows what he, he knows what he's doing, man.

Only the best and bravest surfers try to ride these waves.

In Hawaii, there's a famous surf spot called Waimea Bay.

The waves there can be more than thirty feet tall in the winter.

Surfers call these big waves.

Yeah.

And he'd saved over 500 people at Waimea Bay, probably more because he didn't report them all.

Yeah.

Were you and Eddie,

The North Shore gives you a completely different feel from Waikiki.

Think Haleiwa, Waima Bay, Sunset Beach, surf culture, food trucks, more laid-back energy.

This is the Oahu people sometimes imagine when they picture a more relaxed Hawaiian vacation.

But there's something you need to know.

The North Shore, let's head north.

The North Shore gives you a completely different feel from Waikiki.

Think Haleiwa, Waima Bay, Sunset Beach, surf culture, food trucks, more laid back energy.

This is the Oahu people sometimes imagine when they picture a more relaxed Hawaiian vacation.

Did you guys chase it on windsurf gear before you started to have a light bulb of a different way to approach it?

I would say we windsurfed it twice, layered, paddled it on one of his Waimea guns.

Again, at the time, it seemed significant in terms of size, but in retrospect, barely breaking.

What we would call a 12 to 14 foot day out there now.

seemed as big as anything we'd ever seen at Waimea at the time.

Again, and for context, most humans would never survive out there.

So you guys, again, at the time it seemed big for you, but now you're like, in retrospect, what you guys have done for the last 30 years, you got it a lot, lot bigger.

The straps were the

Right now, it's beautiful.

Ooh, Waimea Bay, everybody.

We'll be right back.

[upbeat music] Weather in Hawaii differs island by island, neighborhood by neighborhood, and at times, hour by hour.

Santa Noel, Korean sun, on a leisure day.

All over Hawaii and Waimea Bay.

Everybody's gone surfin', surfin' USA.

[upbeat music] Everybody's gone surfin', surfin' USA.

Yeah, might be a little bigger then.

Okay, talking about Big Wave and talking about Waimea, because you were saying, you know, about Hawaii and going out there in Waimea, the image that comes to my mind is that image of Greg Knoll surfing Waimea Bay.

Like, today... surfing allowed technology in surfing, especially safety, allowed a big wave surfer to reach even higher level than the one of Greg Knoll.

But in your personal opinion, it's better today where you have like all these equipment saving protecting you and saving your life or it was much better back then when you had like these people defying that and surfing the biggest wave with these heavy surfboards what is in your opinion the most let's say iconic or the most beautiful to see

And so, yeah, that's all the doors that I

see nowadays.

Can you imagine like those surfers of the sixties or the fifties surfing Waimea? And looking at today waves, how stuck they would be to see that we, I mean, us as people are able as surfer to surf a hundred foot wave or more, you know? I guess at that time they would not even imagine that this would be possible to happen, right? It's huge.

Like a Greg Knoll, a Greg Knoll surfing Huainilla at, I don't know, a 20 foot wave or, or 25.

Waimea.

Waimea Bay.

Waimea Bay.

That's where the big waves would roll in that they would surf now.

I'm sure there's other places around that get big waves, but that's like the original, I think.