The ancient Kahunas‘ hang out?

[oldmansurfer]

This is about when I almost drowned. I was surfing at Hanalei and in real good shape at the age of 20. I could hold my breath for 2 minutes easily and swim 4 laps (100 yards) in the Kapaa pool underwater with one breath. The waves were fairly large and I had my largest surfboard which was a 7 foot 2 inch Progressive Expressions board that I loved. Paddling out I couldn't tell how big it was but the current going out was strong so while the paddle was twice as far as the usual long paddle it was similar in effort required because the huge waves pushed water over the reef and it had to go back out , so it did so in a rip current right beside the waves coming in. You could just get into the current and wait and it would take out fairly quickly. I was fairly sure I had never surfed Hanalei at this size before and as I got to the outside it was huge with faces about 30 to 35 feet or more. It looked like the waves should be make able and there weren't a lot of people out so I was stoked as well as scared by the size. The biggest I had surfed Hanalei was 10 to 15 foot (up to 30 foot faces). There were about 5 or 6 guys sitting on the edge of the break. I asked them if they were catching any and they said they were considering it. I looked at the massive waves and knew I had to go. I knew I would hate myself for not trying. I asked them how big and mentioned 17 feet. And they agreed it was around that size.



I paddled into the lineup and attempted to takeoff at various spots then tried a little deeper until I could takeoff. I did ok but the takeoffs were hairy. On most of the waves I would paddle and stand up and drop down about 10 or 15 feet only to start coming back up the wave as the bottom dropped off the wave and it pitched up higher and higher and steeper and steeper till I finally either came back over the back of the wave thereby missing it or the water would release it's grip on my board and I would fall with the board barely touching the water down to the bottom. I felt horrible on those waves where I was pulled up and over the back missing the wave. I got mentally and physically all geared up for the massive drop only to have the wave pass me by, leaving me futilely standing on my board on the back side of the wave. It was such a drastic disappointment. All that fear and excitement for nothing. Taking the drop was incredibly scary. On those waves I could drop down it was out of my control. As I dropped I could feel my board flutter back and forth under my feet which meant it wasn't firmly in the water. Everything went into slow motion and the drop seemed to take minutes when in reality it was just a couple seconds. I could see the individual drops of water coming off the tip of my board and floating away in slow motion. When I reached the bottom the board gradually started pushing up into my feet firmly and as I started my turn at the bottom I would look up and see this massive wall of water. Now I had surfed other places this size but at Hanalei it was different. The other places I had surfed the size of the wave tapers off fairly rapidly but at Hanalei it stayed the same size for a long ways. I poured on the speed trying to get well into the wave which resulted in me going well in front of the break. I think on my first wave I was 50 yards in front of the breaking portion of the wave when I cut out. I was jamming a hard bottom turn then getting up high on the face and dropping back down the face. It became apparent to me that when high on the face it was so steep and high that my fin was probably out of the water. I was concerned that if I hit a chop I would loose my edge but there were no chops. On a couple waves I felt the shadow of the lip coming over me but didn't want to take my eyes off the face because I was looking for chops. Somewhere along this time the other guys went in to my astonishment without apparently trying to catch any waves. After riding several waves I realized I didn't need so much speed so tried on the next wave to slow down a bit.



On the next wave I didn't jam a bottom turn at the earliest moment and that was the one that caught me off guard and broke in a huge section in front of me. I had to straighten out and try to ride it out. The powerful whitewater from the breaking wave came up behind me and blasted me off my board and then after a little bouncing around under water I began to be towed by my surf leash under water. My board is connected to my foot by a stretchable cord attached on one end to my board and the other to a Velcro fastener wrapped around my ankle. The wave caught my board and pulled it dragging me by the cord under water. The board was doing what surfers call tomb stoning. It was upright and being pushed by the whitewater and thereby towing me. If you were in front of the wave you would probably see the board upright going along in front of the wave and know a surfer was on the other end. I had had this happen several times before but this time it went on for a long time. It reminded me of when I used to hang on to the handle on the towline of a ski boat in Wailua river and have it tow me behind under the water. It actually was exciting with all the water rushing past. Initially I thought it would rip off my leg and someone would recover my board with my leg attached and think it was a shark. After a while my body caught up speed to the wave and it was okay. There was nothing I could do but wait since the force of the water did not allow me to reach down and release the ankle wrap. It must have been about 30 seconds that I was towed until the Velcro gave up it's hold on my ankle. Then I got bounced around a bit more for maybe another 30 seconds.



Finally I was able to swim the surface only to find the surface was covered with about 2 to 3 feet of foam. Now I had been catching waves in the ocean for a long time and never seen this situation before. My first thought was this foam would dissipate and then I would be able to breath so I waited and got hit by a couple more waves and bounced around and held under for another 20 or 30 seconds each wave. Now I realized it wasn't going away and I needed to do something. I tried to swish the foam away and could make a cone shaped temporary opening in the foam but I got hit by another wave so while I was under the water and the wave had quit bouncing me around and I could come up to the surface I let out all the air in my lungs came up to the surface swished the foam away and breathed in only to suck in foam which made me want to cough. I had coughed in the water before and you automatically suck in water after the cough and this is how you can drown. So I mentally fought the urge to cough and got hit by another wave.



I was concentrating so hard on not coughing that I lost track of anything else. I have no idea how long it was but I was brought back to reality when I felt something rubbing on my back. I opened my eyes and realized I was laying on my back on the bottom of the ocean in about 15 feet of water. Because my lungs were empty I had no buoyancy and had sunk to the bottom and it was the reef rubbing my back. Everything looked brown and I was surprisingly calm. I thought to myself "So this is what it's like to drown. It's not so bad." I always thought drowning would be some horrible thing with your lungs burning as you breathed in water. I just lay there looking up at the surface almost like I was drifting off to sleep. Suddenly I realized there was a dark spot on the surface of the water which represented an absence of foam. I pulled myself together and swam for that spot. My consciousness was fading fast I wanted to just stop and sleep. The ocean disappeared and all I could see was a black tunnel full of water with the dark spot of water at the end. I used every bit of remaining energy that my faltering brain could force out of my faltering body. But I made it to the dark spot and got a breath of air only to be hit by another wave. But as I bounced around under the water the darkness that had overcome me lifted and I knew I wasn't going to die that day. I smiled as I was bashed around. After the wave let up I took another breath. I remember thinking "should I try to take another breath" and was hit by another wave. I resisted the urge to laugh. I was elated. I was visited by my old friend death once again and he had decided to let me live once again.

After getting my breath I started to swim in. At first it was mostly getting hit and pushed in by the massive whitewater. Then there started to be a reform of the wave below the whitewater and I managed to catch it and ride it in bodysurfing. On the inside the reform started to have some shape and looked like it would be fun to surf except for the whitewater over the top of it. I got in to the shallows and there was my board! I was even more happy because I thought I wouldn't be seeing it again. As I came up on the beach the guys who were outside came running up to me and said how happy to see me they were because they thought I had drowned. I asked them if the saw what happened but realized immediately you couldn't see the break from the shore and they responded that they saw my board come in without me. I guess the prospect of getting to the beach boardless through all that huge whitewater seemed unlikely. Unlikely that is me. It's just fortunate that I could hold my breath for a long time and I knew not to panic or cough under water and I knew how to bodysurf and I was a very strong swimmer.

[oldmansurfer]

The turns I was doing were huge speed turns where I went from the bottom to the top of the wave then sort of fell back down the face. These walls were huge and I would go nearly to the top and then with the board pointed down the line slip down the face of the wave. I could feel at the bottom where the fin engaged and the board started to push back into my feet. That was my signal to bottom turn right back up to the top. Dropping down was a weird sensation like going down in an elevator. My board was pointing down the line but the wave was so steep and I am pretty sure the fin was out and the board was sideslipping down the face because it was just like an elevator dropping and I didn't need to change direction of the board much it was always pointed down the line

[oldmansurfer]

This is what I wrote about my deepest tube ride.
I was a still a teenager and surfing at Hanalei. I hadn't been surfing there in a while but heard the swell was up. Paddling out I had no idea how many surfers were already out. You couldn't see how many very well from the shore in larger surf. When I got out there it was breaking 6 to 8 feet and there were about 60 surfers! Way too many for me. I would have a hard time competing for waves with that many. I sat there and tried to figure out which side of the crowd to hang out on because I would have a better chance to ride some waves if I hung on one side or the other. On the inside (the Bowl) I could catch the leftovers or the waves where people wipe out since every single wave will have someone riding it. On the outside (Impossibles) I may be able to get the wave before the others have a chance. After catching a couple shorter and smaller leftover waves I decided to try outside and paddled over. It was real difficult there too since a few others had already pushed out into that area. I knew everyone there and they all out paddled me for the waves so I caught zero waves try as I might.

Then I noticed waves breaking over about 75 yards from everyone which only broke about every 15 minutes or so but no one there. The waves looked fast but ridable and with no one there if I caught a wave every 15 minutes that would be one more wave every 15 minutes than what I was catching where I was. So I paddled over there. The first wave that came in I took off on and immediately got covered up by the wave. I was in the tube but completely covered in white water and figured I would be lunching it soon. But suddenly my head popped out of the whitewater. I could see down the wave and I was so far back in the tube I could not see where the wave was breaking. The wave made a gradual turn and I could not see the breaking part of the wave as it was hidden by the bend in the wave which was 30 yards or so ahead. I was at least 30 yards deep in the tube which is the furthest back that I had ever been. Gradually my body and board emerged from the whitewater and after a while I could see light at the end of the tube but no sky because the wave curved. I came closer and closer to the breaking lip and started thinking I was going to make it and sure enough I emerged from the tube to see 5 guys paddling to catch the wave I was riding. I figured maybe they didn't see me and yelled "WHOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOO" Partly to warn them and partly because I was so stoked I just had to yell at the top of my lungs.

The first 4 guys backed off when they saw me but the fifth guy dropped in on me. He made the wave break/chandelier where he took off which obstructed my view which made me decide to straighten out. If I could have seen him I would have followed him on the wave. I got pounded by the wave and towed for a while till my leash came off my ankle. Then I had to swim in to get my board. I was a little disappointed because I would have gotten tubed again if not for that one guy. Still it was the best tube ride of my life so hard to feel very bad about it. By the time I got my board and paddled back out one of the local guys had punched the guy who dropped in on me in the face and was telling him to get out of the water. I don't know if he dropped in on someone else or what but I wasn't going to lose any sleep over it. I just paddled back to that spot again and thought "maybe crowds aren't such a bad thing".

In fact I took the worst poundings of my life up until that point. There were 5 or 6 wave sets breaking inside of there and I got caught inside after riding a wave and just drilled repeatedly. Once the first set let up I paddled like crazy to get out before the next set hit and I got drilled again. I was so winded and exhausted as I took this repeated pounding and even though I managed to get a breath between each wave it wasn't enough. I thought "Oh no! I am drowning." Then that set let up and I realized I wasn't drowning. Then I paddled like crazy again and got caught by the next set. As I took this beating I recall thinking "drowning is probably better than this". I made it out after that set but made a note to myself the next time I get caught inside I am going in. And I caught a few more waves but nothing like that one wave. Got caught inside again and went in.

[oldmansurfer]

That is maybe my longest tube ride as it was 75 yards but I did have another one of similar length though not quite as deep. It was at my home break Horners which usually breaks left but on this day there was also a right that breaks from time to time and on this day it was breaking about 75 yards out of the pile of rocks that sticks out of the water there. This is a danger of the the break but can usually be easily minimized by cutting out before you get there or on other days by not wiping out in front of it. I was switching between the left and the right because they both ended in the same area right around the rock. While I managed to get tubed a few times on the usual left, the right was breaking hollow but I couldn't figure out how to get tubed on the right. I got into the pocket with the lip breaking over me but never actually covered up by the wave. I had been taking off at various spots along the wave as it looked so good I never made it out to the peak but finally resisted the urge to catch a wave before the peak but that didn't work either so I tried taking off on the far side of the peak and that was it. I was tubed immediately almost before I was completely standing up. It was a big hollow tube for the size of the wave which was about 6 foot (12 foot faces). The tube felt very comfortable, I was riding along keeping up with the wave pretty evenly. I was so amazed by the size of the tube I held my arms out sideways and could not touch the wave with either hand. So there I was feeling very relaxed and happy and cruising along with my arms out and the tube kept going and going and I couldn't see out of the tube because I was still very deep. At some point the relaxed and happy mode I was in changed to one of alertness and anxious because I knew the rock was coming up and I wasn't able to see out of the tube to see where it was. So I was very alert when it finally opened up and revealed the rock right in my way. I quickly turned up the wave and managed to get my body over the top of the wave but my board got caught by the lip and didn't make it over the back of the wave and then I was swept over the rock and I flattened out like a starfish on the top of the water as I went over the rock. I received a small scratch on my chest and my board a small scratch on the deck and that was it.

[oldmansurfer]

When I was young body surfing was my thing. I body surfed as often as I could and I learned as much as I could from others about the ocean and bodysurfing. Most of what I did others did and told me about it. Sometimes things they say helped to save my life. One thing is don't panic underwater. It may seem irrelevant but if you panic then the chance of you drowning increases. Panicking makes you use up more oxygen and shortens the time you can survive under water. Another one is don't cough underwater. When you cough you will automatically suck in water after you cough so don't cough underwater. The one additional thing I learned bodysurfing is if you get creamed by a wave and all the air is pushed out of your lungs and you have water in your mouth just swallow it. Trying to spit it out will waste time and if you are not successful which is most likely the case you will breath in the water and cough then drown. This was just something that some bodysurfer told me and while I never used this knowledge surfing, I did use it bodysurfing. I swam out one day into massively huge waves. I did not stop to check the conditions because I was hot and tired and wanted to get wet. The shorebreak had about 10 to 12 foot faces and before I knew how big it was I looked up at a massive shorebreak about to land on me. I swam to the bottom and hugged it and the lip landed directly on my back. It pinned me into the sand and pushed all the air out of my lungs and cracked my entire back. I could hear all my vertebrae pop. When I came up I had a mouthful of water because after compressing my ribs and pushing all the air out of my lungs my rib cage expanded thereby sucking in water. I had no air to blow it out of my mouth but I recalled what that one guy told me and swallowed the water then took a breath before the next wave hit. I am still here because someone gave me good advice.

[oldmansurfer]

I wrote this 11 years ago "I just found out I have something in common with Jennifer Aniston" No it wasn't that I dated John Mayer. It is she injured her knee recently surfing on Kauai. So did I but only an aggravation of a previous injury. During the next 11 years I have not injured my knee surfing.

[BoMan]

I'm missing too many perfect peeling waves because I can't get to my feet in time and it's no fun watching them race away from my vantage point in the white water! The ravages of time have turned my popup into an embarrassing crawl-up.

I've started working on burpees and back flexibility.

Can you suggest some old fella solutions?

[oldmansurfer]

I have been doing a lot of stretches for most of my life. The trick is keep yourself mobile. I’m not sure what you need to do but perhaps some physical therapy sessions with a sports therapist might be a start

[BoMan]

Tightness in my back and hamstrings along with reduced strength in my arms have pushed me into the habit of popping up with my knees. I'm working to reverse this before it's too hard to undo!

[jaffa1949]

Tightness in my back and hamstrings along with reduced strength in my arms have pushed me into the habit of popping up with my knees. I'm working to reverse this before it's too hard to undo!

Any Pilates or Yogalates trainers around, that is one way to learn how to self naturally relengthen a relax those areas.

If you choose to do burpees don’t get explosive in the movements until you have done slow opening stretches, explosive exercises suit only the young not after injury or age!
The Kahunas are vintage wines to be treated with respect and leisurely appreciation

[oldmansurfer]

The stretches I do for my back problems is
1) Back roll. I sit down knees up to chest and roll back up onto my shoulders so that my weight is supported by only my neck and shoulders and then roll back (almost) to the sitting position then back again. I repeat this 10 times. Now when I first started this I was in my 30's and still quite flexible so perhaps try to see if you can pull your legs up and get into the the shoulder/neck position with your legs straight up (brace with your arms) I had a friend who asked me what I did and this is what I told him but he had bridging spondylosis of his spine and it was like just one solid bone so this was impossible for him to do. Any of these would be impossible for him to do but years ago he might have been able to keep from getting bridging spondylosis or not.
2) I lay on my stomach and grab my ankles and roll back and forth on my stomach or just stretch it out

3) I lay on my back and bring my feet up to my butt then push my pelvis up as high as it can go and hold that for a few seconds and repeat a few times

I do all these usually at least 5 days a week.

[BoMan]

2) I lay on my stomach and grab my ankles and roll back and forth on my stomach or just stretch it out

You are flexibIe sir! I can barely touch one ankle at a time and will have to approach this like Jaffa says "with leisurely appreciation."

Thanks for the ideas.

[oldmansurfer]

When I was very young, like from the time I was 9, I did yoga and was much more flexible. I used to cross my legs behind my head and walk around on my hands to the amusement of my brothers. Now I can barely sit in the lotus position because I haven't kept that up. But I did do stretches just not yoga stretches. I am currently working on my shoulder flexibility and found a new stretch to do for this. I stand in a doorway and around waist high grab the door frame the lean forward and try to push that shoulder more forward. I hold that for a few seconds then grab a few inches up and do the same thing and keep going up the door frame till I am directly overhead. Then I lean back and bring my elbow forward and work my way back down with my elbow pointing as far forward as I can. Then I do this with the other shoulder. I am always careful to not do any stretches that makes me more painful so I don't push it till it hurts. But I have had a problem with my right shoulder and suddenly the left one was tightening up and this has been good for that shoulder

[oldmansurfer]

A great day surfing
I was surfing at Kealia Beach and there were a few people out even though it was kind of big stormy waves. The waves were breaking about 6 to 8 feet (about 10 to 15 foot faces) and it was breaking unevenly with sections all along the wave which is basically what I learned to surf on and felt completely comfortable surfing these conditions. I am a regular foot which means I surf with my left foot forward and so prefer to go to the right since that would make me face the wave as I rode. However this day I tried a left and found they were much better waves. I had an incredible ride and got tubed several times on that wave. I had just learned a new maneuver which was a backside turn (for me going left) under the lip. It really was something that just didn't seem possible because it would place me completely upside down under the lip with my face inches away from the wave. The first time I tired it was out of desperation. Sometimes when you are riding a wave you get in the tube which is what you want but he wave is breaking faster than your board is able to go eventually you will be essentially swallowed up by the wave and pounded. When you are in a front side wave (facing the wave) you can make little turns to speed yourself up raising your weight up the wave and then gravity pulls you back down adding more energy to the dynamic resulting in a faster speed, the more turns the faster you go. However when riding backside at least for me the shape of the tube doesn't fit as well and with your back to the wave it is harder to judge how much room you have. The result is often that your head touches the tube and it pulls you over and off the board unless you are really quick to correct it. So on one wave I just thought what if I turn off the under side of the lip directly overhead? That would turn my head down and maybe get me some speed in a backside wave. So on this day the waves were the right size and shape to make this turn useful and I did it several times during the course of the day and even did it twice on the same wave when prior to this I had only done this turn twice ever. Anyway I had a really outstanding day surfing and made many of these huge lefts that maybe I couldn't have without the turn. I was using my slow board. At the time I had two boards both made by Joe Kuala who was a really great shaper. The first board he made me worked so well I got another from him and in fact over the years every board I had was from him.

Joe was a real nice guy and a great board shaper. I met him entirely by accident one day as I was out cruising around in my car looking for surf. I was headed south and ran into a woman and her daughter hitch hiking along the road. I pulled over and offered them a ride and they were headed to Lawai which as a little farther than I intended to go but thought what the heck their car broke down and it wasn't too much trouble for me since there was apparently no surf. In talking I learned her husband Joe was a shaper and I told her what a coincidence cause I was looking for a new board. She said I should talk to her husband but I was hesitant because I was shy and figured he probably wouldn't appreciate someone begging him to make a board. Well she convinced me to talk to him so I did. He asked me what I liked to do on a board and then made me a board that was the best board I ever surfed and real fast (my fast board). I only had two at that point but it was noticeably better than the other two boards. I liked it so much I took him one of the other boards which I never really learned to ride and told him I liked the way it looked but couldn't make it work for me. I asked him to make me one like it but make it so that it worked. The result was my slow board a seven foot swallow tail. It was slower than the other board but I could make it go fast if I worked it with a lot of speed turns but not as fast as the fast board with speed turns. On the other hand if I wanted to get tubed this was the board unless it was real big or fast because my fast board was so fast I had to constantly do things to slow down to get in the tube or stay in the tube. On this particular day one of the other surfers paddled over to me to let me know that I was riding the wave further than anyone else that day. I said well they probably didn't want to get caught inside which is what happened to me on almost every wave. He said no that wasn't it. I said well maybe I am just getting caught inside and pushed further in and he said that's not it either. It didn't make sense since there were at least a couple of surfers who were goofy foot and better surfers than me so they should have been able to surf it better than me. In retrospect I think it was just a testament to how well that backside under the lip turn worked.

Anyway I had a really great day surfing and came in to rest and talk story with anyone around if I knew anyone there. There weren't any of my friends on the beach but suddenly a guy approached me. It was Titus who was one of the best surfers on the island if not the best. I didn't really know him well but I knew his older brother who had taught me to surf. In retrospect I suspect he mistook me for my younger brother. Titus says "Hey howzit. I like use your board." I was surprised since for most surfers their boards are the most important things in their life. I told him "my board is like my girlfriend. I can't let you go out with her." Titus responded "I like use your board." I asked "Can I use your board?" he responded "No. I like use your board." I said "Can I use your girlfriend?" Titus just said "No. I like use your board." Well he was being very civil about it and I figured maybe if he liked it Joe Kuala would get some good business so I let him use it. I have no clue if it helped Joe get customers but he called me a bit later and said it was time for me to get a new board. Yeah it was true my boards were falling apart but I LOVED THEM!!!! I just couldn't wrap my mind around not using them anymore because they still got me where I wanted to go. I saved up enough to get another board and it was even better than the others.

[oldmansurfer]

At the previous story Titus was watching the surf. I am pretty sure he does this a lot because he was one of the best surfers and he wanted to see how the waves were and what other surfers were able to do with them. Then most likely figure out a plan to maximize his time in the ocean. I am not sure how often he did that but the next story I am going to tell involves him doing that too. But first I wanted to say something about paddling out on that day above. At Kealia landing the surf break from the above story there was a spot in the left corner of the bay right next to where the side of the bay goes out from the main beach. At the end of that is a bunch of huge boulders that block the waves and make a little sheltered spot and boats used to anchor there. But right by the corner there is where all the Kealia surfers paddle out. On a small day it's fairly easy to paddle out there but as it gets bigger it requires better paddling and more duckdiving skill. On an average day you may get out without duckdiving or you may have to duckdive 3 times. On that day it was likely you had to duckdive multiple times maybe 6 or 8 or more if you're unlucky. There was a unspoken competition between surfers paddling out at the same time. The first one out was the winner. Many of the regulars could out paddle me on most days but once in a while I could beat them out. However on huge days like this I never paddled from that spot and quite often on regular days I would just walk 30 or so yards further down the beach to the sheltered area and paddle out there. On a regular day if we both started in the same spot on the shoreline and the other surfers paddling out and me walking up the beach and paddling from the sheltered area I could beat them out or arrive at the same time. On big days I would easily beat them out as it was just a matter of paddling to the end of the sheltered area and waiting for a break in the waves then paddle like crazy for a few seconds and I am outside of the break. On that day when I got out the other surfers in the lineup let me catch the next wave as they were tired and needed to rest but my arms were fresh.

Anyway this story is about surfing Hanalei which is a nice right breaking reef that in those days had 2 parts that everyone recognized. Impossibles was a fast part of the wave and I guess difficult for some to make but not for me ever. I always thought they should change the name to possibles because that wave had a lot of possibilities to get tubed and do maneuvers. Then there was the Bowl which was where the wave bent and made a very often very hollow wave break. I was surfing Impossibles and on the end there was a slack section of about 30 yards before the Bowl. The wave quit being hollow and kind of quit breaking but the bowl would break. The slack section was only like waist to shoulder high and I was cutting out there and paddling back out but saw one of the guys I knew doing speed pumps through the slack section to get to the bowl. I thought I can do that as I am probably even better at speed pumps than all those guys. So the next wave I went I speed pumped into the bowl and it was breaking lurching up off the reef to almost as high of a wave as Impossibles. As I paddled back out one of the surfers paddled up to me and said Titus is watching and if you want to stay in the water after he gets here you have to backdoor the bowl. The only place he could be watching is from the scenic lookout about a quarter mile from the beach so he was probably there with binoculars watching and making his plan which on that day included kicking a bunch of surfers out of the lineup. I was not aware of this rule for this lineup but then I had only surfed there 10 or so times. I asked him what he meant by backdooring the Bowl. He said you need to time the peak and enter after the lip dropped down. This did not seem fair to me but it was a good challenge for me. It also made me get much deeper tubed than I would have without this challenge. The first few waves I wasn't able to time it to be considered backdooring it but I did get fantastic tube rides. The Bowl had a huge tube considering the size of the wave and the view from within was spectacular. On maybe 1 out of 5 waves I was too deep to make it out but the rest of the waves were fantastic. Finally I timed it so the lip touched down before I went in and I had sufficient speed from the bottom turn to get well into the tube. So I surfed into what looked like what you were supposed to be surfing out of. I was in the tube for a long time and this tube was not so pretty. It was full of chandeliers where for whatever reason little waterfalls were dropping from the top of the wave on this wave only maybe 3 inches wide waterfalls at the most but nothing like the clean tubes I had previously. The end of the tube was collapsing as I came out so I kind of shot out through the whitewater. I bet Titus was surprised I came out of that one LOL. Titus came out a little later and kicked a bunch of guys out but let me stay.

[BoMan]

Well that's one way to improve...meet the challenge or go home!
Is this the guy?

http://towsurfer.com/2017/05/titus-kinimaka-interview-from-the-2006-towsurfer-vault/

[oldmansurfer]

Yes he is a true waterman. He surfs or surfed big waves and had the notoriety of breaking his leg in the Eddie big wave event at Waimea bay. His family are all watermen, His daughters have competed professionally in surf contests. I believe Maluhia was in the recent Supergirl event at Huntington. I don't know if he excels in any of the wave riding formats as he does longboarding though. He is just a pleasure to watch longboarding. Lately I have only seen him SUP and foil. That's probably out of date though as he is like a few years younger than me which would have him in his 60's not 48

[oldmansurfer]

[oldmansurfer]

Yes well there is something to all these local conventions. The backdoor it or leave was motivation for me to get deeper and better tubes. The paddling out competition which I sometimes chose not to do was good for training duckdiving and paddling. They all judged others by how they did in the ocean. So if I went around and did the easy way they might say I was a wimp and I should man up and endure the pounding to get out. And very often I would go out at the same spot as them just for the training. There was also a thing about riding the backwash out. If you could do that you were acceptable, If you could stand up and ride it out your were exceptional and if you could start off jumping on your board standing you were a star. Me I tended to do my own thing but they would clue me in to what was expected.

[BoMan]

"On regular days I would just walk 30 or so yards further down the beach to the sheltered area and paddle out there."

This is my go-to move every time! I try to save as much energy as possible to catch waves and surf them. When I get caught inside it cuts my session short.