Season's greetings

Catching the crest of Hawaii's magical waves

TURTLE BAY, Oahu -- One of the most reassuring things about Oahu's North Shore -- where the waves are peeling clean in the early morning air outside my window -- is the singlemindedness of its inhabitants. The population is disproportionately young and disproportionately male and, on rainy days, there are many sports fans who will gather to watch football or to tune in to Benny Agbayani playing in the big leagues back on the mainland.

But let us suppose that the weather here is clear and warm (this is Hawaii, after all). Let's say it's Super Bowl Sunday, or the day of a big heavyweight fight. Or perhaps the World Series or the NBA title hangs in the balance. Regardless of what is happening back on the mainland, the North Shore locals invariably wake and ask each other the same question: "How is it?"

They're fishing for an answer such as this: "Eight to 10 at Pipe and an offshore wind. It's good and gnarly out there."

Life here is always about the waves, and the waves are the best in autumn and early winter. For much of last week, the sets did indeed roll in clean, at eight, 10, 12 feet on balmy days at Pipeline, one of the world's most fabled surfs. The days are short now, of course: first light at well after 5 a.m., sunset well before 6 p.m., but there is plenty of time to surf.

The waves were sizable at Haleiwa, too, just down the coast from Pipe. This was good news for the pro surfers and their sponsors because Haleiwa was, as usual, hosting the first installment of surfing's Triple Crown. The pro surf season is nearing its end -- the last of the tour's events will be completed by Christmas, by which time a champion will have been crowned -- and also at its apex: one month's worth of prime events, glorious exhibitions and heart-stopping, big-wave battles all along the coastline. There is no better place to be than here when you're armed with a surfboard under your arm or a pair of binoculars in your hand.

"Before last week, a gloomy run of rainy days had kept the Haleiwa competition at bay for days on end while the pro surfers, who had come from Australia and Brazil and the U.S. and all the islands, even England, fidgeted in their coastal bungalows, went to mid-day movies in Honolulu and reduced the island's beer supply to near critical levels. Then, last Wednesday, the sun re-appeared, the wind blew true and there were enough glassy barrels to float a competition for two straight days. The waves broke erratically, as they tend to do in Haleiwa's churning shallows, but that meant they sometimes they broke perfectly.

The first leg of the Triple Crown unfurled swiftly and magically. In less than 30 hours the event narrowed from its round of 64 to the finals, and at the end of it Sunny Garcia, a glowering 32-year-old from Oahu's West Shore and a beloved legend, held the trophy and his $10,000 winner's check aloft. Garcia, who is shaped like a pit bull and tattooed dramatically across his arms and meaty shoulders, is the North Shore's most successful surfer and adored by even the most menacing of the surf posses.

Garcia won the event in warhorse, Willis Reed style, surfing with a badly spasmatic back, as well as shredded ligaments in his left knee that doctors have urged him to have repaired by surgery. Instead, Garcia shaved his leg and wrapped a few feet of duct tape around his right knee. ("Duct tape fixes everything," he declared). He would surf his heat, retire immediately to the tent for medial work on his back and leg, then go back out. He plans to take a cortisone shot before the next contest.

Garcia won the final mainly on the strength of a neat barrel in the first minute (the judges gave him an 8.83 on the 10-point scale) and when time in the heat expired, the crowd cheered the old man. "I can't believe he won that!" said the boys on the beach. "Sunny doesn't quit."

Garcia's win capped two days of aesthetic thrills and drama that included spectacular work by perhaps the only surfer you've heard of -- Kelly Slater. Slater is the six-time pro champ, and the Baywatch hero, etc., and if you haven't been paying attention to surfing lately, you may think he has been winning these kinds of events all year. He hasn't. After two seasons away, which he spent surfing the globe on his own, Slater, 30, returned to the pro tour last April. He won't come close to winning his seventh title and is is way back of the pack largely because, as he says, "I've gotten very used to surfing in non-competitive situations."

You could see the rust on Slater throughout the year, in his miscalculated heats and poor wave selection, but he still dazzled peerlessly from time. And now the great Slater of old is rounding into form. He made the semifinal at Haleiwa when, while trailing badly in the quarterfinals, he pulled a dramatic and courageous 360-degree turn in the critical section of a 12-foot wave. Even if you aren't a surfing aficionado, you could see the majesty of the move. The leathery graybeards on the beach pounded their chests in appreciation and said it was, after all these years, something they'd never before seen in competition. That is Slater for you.

Even as Slater was ripping that move, a few miles up the coast the sea was full of bodies on boards, surfers who hadn't traveled down to see their heroes. Not on this day. The waves were good, you see, and when the waves are good on the North Shore of Oahu, there is only one thing to do.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Kostya Kennedy takes sides every Wednesday at CNNSI.com.

 

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