Maui Trip

Myself and a handful of friends hit Maui for a wedding/Halloween/surf mission.

This time of year, the northside of the island is really the only side that gets swell. Nic, JR, Brock, SeanBro and myself all stuck to Ho’okipa which is about a 15 min drive east of the airport (JOJ). We surfed it for about 7 days straight. Roughly a couple, 2+ hour sessions per day. It started off small–probably waist high. The last 4 days we surfed, it was over head.

Ho’okipa is a slightly shallow reef break (sketch factor=low) with 4 distinct peaks. Pavills, Middles, Point, and Green Trees. We surfed Middles and Green Trees for the most part which break both left and right. From Middles, the left would put you in the channel which was nice when it got big. Going right on Middles when it’s big puts you right in the impact zone/shallow reef which was a bitch to get back out on the longer sets. Going right on Green Trees put you in a channel and left would put you in the same blast zone as Middles. Pavills was a point right and pretty local. Surfed there a few times but it was tough to get waves since everyone rips.

When the swell picked up on Wednesday, there was a bunch of bombs that rolled through. We all got worked a bunch. Even though Ho’okipa has two channels, there’s a lot of paddling involved especially when bigger. Quite a few times i got pushed way inside and had to paddle to either channel to get back out. Sic, fun, sectiony, long rides though.

There was a ton of turtles out at Ho’okipa. Huges ones–3ft diameter shells. They werew pretty much crowding the line up. I pulled out of dropping a few times cause there was a big-ass turtle right below me. Def pretty cool watching those things swim around–they’d come up so close you could touch them. Which is illegal. I didn’t grab one of their tails.

Earlier in the week when it was small, SeanBro hooked us up with one of his friends who lined up some stand-ups and a few long boards. We hit the south side of the island with a few friends who were beginners–same beach that dude got bit at the week before. We didn’t tell them though.

Stand up was pretty difficult. At least for me. I kept doing down about a second after i stood up. Eventually i just reverted back to paddling on my knees. Cruisin. 5 mins or so into my ’session’ i noticed something dark in the murky water as i was knee paddling. Whatever it was zig-zagged a couple times right under me–super fast. Pretty sure turtles don’t move that fast. Whatever it was it was outro quick which was fine with me.

Did Lahaina for Halloween. Evidently it used to be a lot more rad than it was. They used to close off Front Street and it was a mardi gras style party. I’d say it was still mardi gras style but now it was relegated to the sidewalk. The fuzz was on hand to keep everyone on the sidewalk–slightly anal about it. Costumes were sic. It was rad walking up/down the side walk checkin/lurkin. Hot weather + Halloween = Chicks go nutz. Lemme just say, Lahaina on Halloween was rad.