The ancient Kahunas‘ hang out?

[oldmansurfer]

I have been very fortunate in my surfing. The way everything played out in my life could have been scripted from when I was very young yet it was entirely unplanned. Learning to swim at a very young age, taking swimming lesson after almost drowning then finding I enjoyed swimming lessons so taking as much as I could joining the swim team, learning to bodysurf in bigger waves, Learning to paipo board in bigger waves. Learning to surf as it seemed to be the way to go and my parents had given me a state of the art surfboard when I still wasn't interested in it. I had zero plans for my life except to move out of my parents house after I graduated from high school. I never expected to make it to 18 years old as I had several medical professionals warn me to change my ways or I would not see 18. I turned 18 and suddenly I was like "I'm still alive! What do I do now?" The job I got was taking care of a small zoo in a hotel near Wailua beach. I found that I enjoyed working with animals so much and recognized that I would not be able to surf as much as I want once the journey to a veterinary medical degree started so I got a passport and planned to go to California and work my way down to Mexico and maybe further south if money held out. I had saved up some money and sold my car and had a good little nest egg of cash to use. Lucky for me I stayed on Kauai and got to surf as much as I wanted there and used the money to finance 4 years of undergraduate school.

I was very fortunate to meet Greg and that he decided to take me along with him on these surfing adventures around Oahu and lucky that I didn't know his level of surfing or it would have bothered me. I would have been looking out for him and concerned for him in conditions that were not a worry for myself. Worried that he was bored not catching waves or might get injured. As it was my ignorance was a blessing for me and maybe for Greg as well. He didn't want my help.
Lucky to have caught so many awesome waves. Lucky to have survived relatively unscathed. Perhaps some of the luck was just me taking advantage of what was before me. I assume that there are lots of surfers who have similar stories. The one I read that I can relate to the most is Barbarian Days A Surfing Life by William Finnegan but if you have read it, it's obvious my experience was different from his. It's the way he relates to the ocean that seems similar to me. I can tell he feels about the ocean similar to me. Or maybe not lol I am so bone headed sometimes.

[oldmansurfer]

Driving by the beach today there is a good sized swell coming in at Wailua. It's not the normal angle so not tubing on most waves. Some surfers sitting in their cars looking at it no one out right now. Hurricane or the remnants of it nearby.

[oldmansurfer]

The swell was better the following day.

I remember a turn I did at Wailua beach a couple times. The waves were about 8 to 10 foot face and I turned right in the pocket below where the lip was breaking and pushed the tail hard up into there. The board pivoted back like a cutback but this turn took all the speed off the board and it just sort of stopped there but the wave was breaking and pushed it sideways causing it to sideslip until the fins grabbed and straightened it out. That was fun because I enjoy that sideways sensation.

Another turn I can recall was a backside top turn at Horners. I wasn't trying to do anything special but there was so much force on the board while I was basically parallel to the bottom of the ocean, it surprised me. I made a hard turn and the board didn't slide at all. It's one of the most powerful turns I have done since restarting to surf.

[oldmansurfer]

I had that one group of surfers who I surfed with regularly however eventually I mostly surfed with the regulars at the beach I learned to surf at because they were there. I enjoyed surfing with those guys but it was hit mor miss, either they were there or they weren't. Later on there was another couple of guys who I surfed with more than once. One of the guys was a real mess. He spent much of his youth in youth correctional facilities and was sexually assaulted by his stepfather. I first met him when he got released from a juvenile detention center in the mainland and his family had moved to Kauai so he came along and went to the same high school as me. The second year he was there he did not attend school so the school thought his registration to attend there was a mistake and his parents assumed he was going to school. He got caught and was sent to a bad boys camp to get a school diploma and keep him off the street till he was 18.. Once he was 18 he was in and out of jail. But then he seemed to get his stuff together. Anyway one particularly funny thing that happened with him was a drunk surfing episode. He was my paipo boarding friend and he started surfing once I did.

Now I associated with all kinds of criminals when I was a kid and was a criminal myself but changed my ways. We were still friends through all his trials and tribulations. He graduated from his bad boys camp and got a high school diploma and we were drinking beer and fairly well along when he says "Let's go surfing." I say "shoots" so we went to my usual break and it was stormy with about 8 to 10 foot faces which I felt completely comfortable in. It was Kealia and at that size there was no concern for my safety at all. I knew what to do to stay safe at that break at that size and conditions. There was a closeout section on the end of the wave and for fun if he was there to watch, I would turn up to the top of the wave run out on the nose and do a somersault from the top of the wave (no leashes). I used to be on the swim team and spent a lot of time in the swimming pool. I learned to do a bunch of dives when I wasn't swimming on a 3 foot regular dive board and a 10 foot high dive board (Kapaa pool was not metric). Consequently I was quite comfortable doing a somersault from that height. I did this a couple times and he paddled over to me to tell me I had to stop because he was laughing so hard he was going to drown. Of course I did it again. Then he started pleading with me to stop or he was going to drown. I thought he was just joking but he was serious. I realized this surf was probably too much for him in his condition right now so we went in. I don't recommend anyone surf while drunk but it was fun for me and a good story to tell LOL

Another funny story about him was he glassed a marijuana leaf into his board. On his first attempt he made the resin batch too hot and it caught fire. He managed to salvage that board and glassed another leaf into the deck then ended up having to cut it out or get it confiscated by the police.


he was the friend from this story as well. It was the latest design a "stinger", something I had only heard about and not seen much till then. It was made by a local surfer so not the real deal (not a Ben Aipa board). Here it was and I had no clue how he got the board since he had no money as far as I knew. I didn't press him for an answer as to how he got it since I really didn't want to hear it figuring he had done some kind of shady deal. But my friend knew I wanted to try the board out and see how it worked so he offered to let me try it out one day at Kealia Landing.



I surfed on it for about an hour and then decided I wanted my board back so I went in and waited on the beach for my friend to come in. The board was ok but I still preferred my own board. While I was waiting I saw a guy running down the beach from the far side of the beach. I started worrying that maybe this was his board and my friend stole it so I made up my mind that if that was the case I would just hand over the board. As he gets closer I hear him yelling at me and I think Oh my gosh it is his board so I kind of hold it out away from my body so he can take it easily but he stops by me and catches his breath a little and says his friend is drowning and needs help while pointing down the beach to the far side. I guess he was so out of breath from running that I couldn't understand what he was yelling as he ran. I look down at the far side of the beach and there are 4 people in the water so I say "Looks like someone else is already out there helping your friend." He responds "Those guys don't know what they are doing. Come on! Help out my friend he's drowning" motioning me with his arm to follow him and then he runs down the beach so I follow him. At about a third of the way back to where his friend was the guy got completely winded so I continued on by myself.



By the time I get there only 2 people remained in the water so I jump in and paddle out. One was outside the break and the other just inside of the break. I could not tell which one was having problems so when I got to where they could hear me I yelled "Which one of you is having problems?" The guy closest to me, a fit looking haole guy says "Me,Me,Me, I am!" So I put him on my surfboard and start pushing him in. There was a slight current going out right there but I was a strong enough swimmer to overcome that even pushing the board in and swimming behind it. I figure that is why he got into trouble this slight current was more than he could handle. He starts yelling at me "We're not getting closer to the shore!" I tell him calmly "We are." He says "No we aren't. We're hardly moving." I told him to relax and we were getting closer and that he was on the board so he wouldn't drown even if I did. Then I hear the other guy yelling "Help! Help!" So I ask the guy I am pushing in if the other guy was having problems too? He says "Yeah. I swam out to help him and got a cramp in my leg." I screamed "Why didn't you tell me?" Then calmed down and said "I have to leave you and go help that other guy. Just hang on to the board and I will come back and get you once I help the other guy." He was screaming at me that he didn't want to die and that he was going to drown. I pointed out that he had the board and He could float till someone else came for him if I drowned.



I swam out to the other guy who was a big Hawaiian guy. He seemed OK and because he was big he floated well so I asked him if he was in real trouble or just tired. He said he was tired so I told him I would take him in through the surf. I asked if he could hold his breath and he said he could so I told him that we were going to get hit by waves but if he could hold his breath it would be OK. He agreed so I proceeded to tow him into the breaking surf. The waves were only about 2 to 3 feet (4 to 6 foot faces) in that area and not big enough to pound us too hard but would help us get in. I watched and when a wave was coming I would tell him to take a deep breath and then as it hit I would push him up as high as I could and the wave would push him in then I would go get him and make sure he was OK then repeat this till we were well inside the break. By then my friend who had seen me go down the beach came down to find out what was up and paddled out to me. I told him what the problem was and he offered to take the big local guy in on the board he had (my board) so I swam back to my first victim and helped him get the rest of the way in. Actually I reached him at the same time he reached the beach on his own.



The guy who had swam out to help the Hawaiian guy disappeared without saying a word once we got to the beach. I went to the big local guy and asked if he was OK and offered to go call an ambulance or anyone else if he needed. He said he didn't need anything else and that he was so thankful that I helped him, he wanted to give me money for it. I told him not to worry and that if I was in trouble and he could help me I am sure he would have so don't worry about it. He kept saying "Thank you , thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you....etc." I decided to leave before he got his breath and tried to force me to take money so I asked if he was OK again and he said he was and endless thank yous after that and I got my board back from my friend and we went back to the surf.

[oldmansurfer]

I know some of you might not think a board can catch fire from a hot mix of resin but I have witnessed it with my own eyes. The same guy as above before he did that marijuana leaf thing was patching a board with a huge deck delamination. It was a free board given to him because he couldn't afford a new board. I was helping him because he knew nothing about resin. However he was also hard headed and a slow learner. He wanted to be able to surf on the board later in the day and it was late morning so he dumped like a whole bottle of catalyst into the mix despite my advising him to not do that and left the board sitting in the sun at the edge of his garage. We went out to buy some cigarettes and came back 30 minutes later to see his board in flames. We saw the smoke from a distance and kind of rushed back to see his burning board. It was too late for that board as the fire got down into the foam. After that he did it again which was typical for this guy. That's just the kind of guy he was.

His parents left Kauai after he was released from the bad boys camp but he didn't want to go with them so he chose to be a homeless guy on Kauai living in his car. I tried to get him jobs and arranged 3 different jobs for him but the first one he quit after 2 minutes the second after 2 hours and the third after 2 days. I told him he was on his own after that. While homeless and jobless I assume he was doing some crime but he did learn to scavenge for food in a convenience store dumpster on Saturdays. That was when they threw out the outdated stuff. While he was picking through the trash one day the convenience store owners daughter saw him doing that. She worked on Saturdays and she felt sorry for him and offered to give him the outdated stuff if he would clean up outside the store. He did this for a while and then was offered a job to get paid cleaning up. Eventually they opened a pizza sub shop and minigolf course and he became the manager for that. He ended up marrying the store owners daughter and moving out to the mainland. All of this happened while I was in college. I found out about this on a short break from University of Hawaii with a group of students. My roommate in college belonged to a family that owned a small hotel/motel near the pizza sub shop minigolf course. We bought a pizza there and he came and served me and when I gave him the money he gave me back change for the $20 bill I had given him (he did not take money for the pizza). The next night I ordered over the phone so we could pick it up without waiting and he said " Hi. Funny thing just happened. We had someone order a pizza and didn't pick it up so if you want it it's free". It had double extra everything like the night before. Anyway That was how I found out about things from him.

Next I heard for him was a long time after that maybe 10 or 20 years and he called me on the phone wanting to sell me some pot or find someone to buy from him. I told him there was no way I could get involved in any drug related anything. But we talked and I found out he had gotten divorced and had a new wife? He had a facebook page and we kept in touch sort of that way. Not sure if married or just living together and she wanted to kick him out because he was growing pot on her property and the state they lived in was still illegal to grow pot although a nearby state was legal. I heard form him again when he had been arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a minor (three of them actually). His friend was getting married and he bought the booze for the wedding reception. There were 3 young girls who were there along with their parents and even though they condoned the booze consumption one of the other people there did not and reported him. He was very upset about it and said he wasn't going to go back to jail again.

I had no idea what that meant but the next I heard on his facebook page that he had blown his brains out with a shotgun. What a hard life. He did it his way I guess.

[oldmansurfer]

I recall a day at Kealia Landing. It was about 3 to 4 feet (6 to 8 foot faces) and all the bradas, the guys who I surf with all the time were out. It was a decent day not really great but not too shabby. This was my favorite kind of day. Our little crowd was perfect and we all got along well. In the middle of the break there were two surfers who were taking turns doing a no paddle takeoff. I wanted to try that but those two guys were kind of hogging the spot. I tried for a while to wait for my turn there but it took too long so I went to surf where I normally would. However one time as I was paddling back out the spot was empty so I took off there with a no paddle takeoff. You can't do that anywhere on any wave. It requires the right conditions and on that day that spot had the right conditions regularly. It's not too difficult to do, spin around and face the shore then as the wave comes you shove your board back a little and as it hits bring the board back up and kick your legs strongly (a scissors kick) then popup. Turns out the wave you catch in that little area sucks so I went back to surfing where I would normally but that did become a skill I kept for many other waves later on.

[oldmansurfer]

The more difficult part of the no paddle takeoff is perhaps learning when to do it. For me it has been mostly a split second decision. It's not a thing I try to do but a thing that seems to be the right thing to do in that particular instant in time. I may think oh those waves I could do a no paddle takeoff on and those waves would be slow moving steep waves or maybe whitewater. The majority that I have done are from a recognition that no paddle is needed at the very instant that I am taking off on a wave. So far I have had 100% success doing a no paddle takeoff for what it's worth when I was surfing that was about once or twice a year..

[oldmansurfer]

I mentioned my first remembrance of the ocean when I was young and living on Maui. We moved to Kauai when I was 4 years old and that was when my mom took me to a tidepool to learn to swim. It was a place that became known as Baby beach because so many locals took their children there to play in the tidepool. We called it Fuji beach because that is what we heard it called. I walked around till I felt comfortable and then lifted my feet off the bottom and dog paddled. Somehow I still remember the feeling of swimming on that day. I was so thrilled. As I grew older the dog paddle remained and one day our family was playing around in a small stream. My oldest brother played a trick on me, urging me to walk toward him. He knew there was a deep pocket between us. I fell into the pocket and panicked. I was bobbing up and down gasping for air forgetting all about how to dog paddle. He came over to me and pulled me out of the water and was awarded hero status for saving my life when we both knew he was to blame for my predicament. I guess he could have let me drown and I appreciate that he didn't do that so I didn't complain too much about him getting accolades for almost drowning me.

My parents worried about the next time in the water with me and found Red Cross Swimming classes to put me in. I found them tolerable at first and then enjoyable. I loved being in the water. They enlisted me in every swimming class they could find and by fourth grade I had taken at least a couple Beginners classes and a couple Intermediate classes and by fourth grade 2 advanced swimming classes. I joined the boy scouts and took the Red Cross Junior Lifesaving class. Then I joined the Kapaa swim team. They had at the time age group swimming where you are grouped into different ages to compete. My brother was in 7th grade, the age at which the groups started. The coach was looking for more people to join and my brother said they should get me to swim since I could beat him in any race. The coach had me come swim and saw that I was fast so he looked in the rule book and determined that the way the rules were written the youngest group which was 12 to 14 years old just said that the swimmers couldn't be older than 14 and not saying anything about being younger so I was put on the team. I actually won a race which helped the team win overall. The coach wanted me to go receive the trophy but I was too shy. I just couldn't do it.

The swim coach changed to an ex Olympic diver. I guess it was the closest thing they could get for a swim coach on Kauai. He wasn't the best swim coach but after practice we always played follow the leader on the dive boards (3 foot and 10 foot). He saw this and after a while told us he was really a diver and not a swimmer and if we wanted he could teach us diving. So we learned diving from him after swim practice.

As I grew older I went through a growth spurt and grew like 8 inches over the summer. Looking back I think this affected my swimming and gradually I was no longer the fastest at breast stroke and then back stroke and then freestyle. I never learned butterfly and coach had no inclination to teach me. I was feeling sorry for myself. Not sure what was going on as I was practicing just as much as the rest of them if not more and they were passing me by in speed. Eventually I quit because it was so disheartening to me. But my attraction to water put me at the beach body surfing. I bodysurfed at Wailua the beach closest to my home and in walking distance. During the summer I hitchhiked to a really great bodysurfing beach on the south shore Brenneke's beach a couple days a week. The waves there were often very bodysurfable meaning you could keep up with the unbroken face of the wave for a long distance. I had learned at Wailua beach to bodysurf the unbroken face of the wave and swore to never ride whitewater again.

[oldmansurfer]

While I was on the swim team they did a practice session which was to swim 25 yards (one lap) in the pool without taking a breath. At first that seemed undoable but I quickly learned I could easily do that. I wondered how far I could go on one breath and on my own I worked up to 50 yards on the surface which the coach never had us do. I then wondered if I could swim under water that far and began attempting to do so. I learned that the sensation of wanting to breath didn't correlate to actually needing to breath and learned to continue on. Also underwater you had to swim differently. I developed a swim technique based partly on what the a monster did, Creature from the Black Lagoon if I recall correctly. The sensation to breath would come up repeatedly as I went along and it faded repeatedly. The lifeguard at the pool noticed me doing this and warned me not to push it too much. I think he was secretly keeping track of me trying to make sure I didn't drown doing it. I also practiced just going under water and holding on the ladder on the deep end of the pool. I got to where I could hold my breath 2 minutes without pushing it too far. I would look at the big clock on the wall of the pool and wait for the second hand to reach 12 then go under and keeping track of the minutes as well and kept track of my times. Eventually I was able to swim 100 yards in one breath underwater. This undoubtedly helped me when I decided to bodysurf and surf.

[oldmansurfer]

The freedom of the summer when you are 14 years old.....hard to beat it. I would wake every morning and turn on the radio and listen to the surf report while I fixed myself breakfast and ate it. If there was any chance of a swell hitting Brennecke's beach or if I just felt like it, I would grab my fins and a buck twenty five and hit the road hitchhiking. Brennecke's beach was about a thirty minute drive away but two hours, 3 rides and maybe a total of 2 miles walking hitchhiking. It was always worth it because Brennecke's was the best body surfing beach in the world and between the waves I could watch the nonstop "bikini contest" going on there on a daily basis. I guess you might say I grew up a lot at Brennecke's. The $1.25 was for lunch a burger and a coke at the nearby restaurant/store.

Girls all wore bikinis and often lost parts of them in the waves there. Bikinis of that day were not the best attire for body surfing yet many women still wore them (thank god). The best girl body surfer there developed a style of body surfing where she rode the waves on her back so that her bikini top wasn't ripped off. But for the rest I might be swimming back out after riding a wave and feel something in the water. It's a bikini top or even a bottom and at first I would do what I did at Wailua. That is walk up on the shoreline waving the bikini and looking for the owner and try to get her to come get it. One of the girls that knew me talked to me and explained how embarrassing it was for girls to openly admit they lost a bikini part or two. I asked her how do I find out who lost the bikini? She said just look for the girl who looks like they lost their bikini. I wondered how that might work for me but said I would give it a try. I looked for the girl who is acting like she lost her bikini and swim over and ask her if she lost it. Funny thing is that actually worked every time Then I would ask her to prove it (if I knew her) but then tell her I was just kidding and give her back the missing part. On occasion girls would come to me and ask me for help to find their tops or bottoms or both. Most of the time I could find them but if not then I would go to the beach and find a shirt or towel to give them. I gave up a couple shirts and a couple towels to distressed girls.

While there I also helped a few people in trouble in the water. Mostly they were just tired or disoriented. Once there were two kids in a inner tube that were being swept by the current into the impact zone in front of jagged boulders and reef. I looked for their parents but no one seemed concerned so I swam over and told them they were in danger and to swim over toward the crowd but they couldn't and asked me to help them. So I towed them back to a safer spot in the lineup. The kids mother came up to me and started scolding me. Clearly she had no clue about the danger they were in so I explained it and her kids backed me up so she apologized and told me I had permission to do it again if necessary. I told her I wasn't the lifeguard and she needed to be sure they didn't end up back in that situation. It was just lucky I noticed them going slowly over toward the rocks.

Another memorable life saving if you could call it that was a drunk girl who was upset that her boyfriend had left her. I caught a wave and was swimming back out when I saw some hair floating on the surface of the ocean. I watched to see if it was a wig or someone attached to I then I saw the body and I thought it was a drowning person. I grabbed her hair and pulled her head out of the water and tried to bring her to shore. After spitting out a little water she started swearing at me and telling me to let her go and about her boyfriend. I let her go but watched her and she was knocked down by the next wave and once again underwater. I waited a little while and then pulled her up out of the water and again she started swearing at me. I waited again as she was knocked down by the next wave and under water again. Again I pulled her up fortunately we were in shallow enough water that she could walk without getting knocked down and made her way back to the beach swearing at me and ranting about her nasty boyfriend.

Brennecke's was my second home that summer and remained an integral part of my life in later years.

[oldmansurfer]

This is about he evolution of my bodysurfing. I started at Wailua beach with no fins just swimming into the waves and riding the whitewater in. Then one day an older boy told me "You know you can ride the unbroken part of the wave?" I was like "What? How do you do that?" He said "Go on the shore and watch." So I went and saw him going along the face of the wave for quite a distance. I went out and as soon as I was able to do that I swore I would never ride whitewater again. So that was a big change for me. It suddenly became a much more enjoyable sport.

The next thing was finding a pair of fins at Brenneke's beach. I found fins regularly, almost as often as bikini parts. My usual thing was to hold the fin up and yell "FIN". Whoever lost the fin would come claim it. One day I was out and there were only a couple people out and I found a fin and they both said "Not mine". There was no one on the beach too so I tried it on and it fit pretty good. I kept body surfing with one fin and then found another identical fin and put that one on the other foot. That was a big boost to my bodysurfing because the bigger the waves the more difficult to take off on them. The fins increased the size of waves that I could reliably catch.

I found that on bigger waves the fins would get torn off my feet regularly so I asked some of the other bodysurfers what they did. One thing was to use fins with no heels and the other was to strap them on. I found for sale a kind of Y shaped rubber piece where each of the ends of the Y formed a loop back to the base so a kind of double Y 3 loop system for holding fins on. One strap over the top, one behind the heel and one on the bottom. This worked really well. Very rare to loose a fin with that strap. Only the most horrendous poundings on the biggest waves would remove a fin.

I had a friend who once told me about guys doing a hydroplaning style of bodysurfing. I didn't really think he was telling the truth as he was also telling me about guys doing areal maneuvers surfing and that had to be a lie LOL No one was doing any of those kind of things in Hawaii as far as I knew. I wasn't sure what he was talking about bodysurfing so I was fooling around and tried pushing my hands down from my waist and found I could actually do this on the drop of a wave with at least a 4 or 5 foot face. This pushed my body out of the water and I was riding on my hands and my fins going very fast. It took different muscles to hold it there but if I brought my elbows over my belly I could kind of lock them there. To turn I would move my hands to the opposite side that I wanted to go. This allowed me to do top to bottom turns and to make the wave much further distances than other bodysurfers. I worked on the muscles at home laying on my belly with hands on my sides and pushing against the floor. At that point I still wasn't able to reliably do many of the skills that the better bodysurfers did like underwater takeoffs and spinners. I kind of went off doing my own thing. I still haven't seen anyone doing this type of bodysurfing in this age of social media. Maybe it is only doable if you are a skinny 14 year old boy. I am not sure as I haven't tried to do it much since I started bodyboarding. Except for around that age all of the times I tried I failed to accomplish a hydroplaning out of the water mode. I was mostly on to other things so never really gave it much effort.

There were limitations to this style of bodysurfing and it required waves in a size between about 4 to 5 foot faces up to 10 to 12 foot faces. Smaller waves wouldn't get enough speed to come out of the water and bigger waves were just too much force to my arms and I wasn't able to hold myself out of the water at the bottom of the wave. On the bigger waves within that size range I would bottom turn and start to skip like a flat stone thrown sideways on the water. These skips made me airborne about 2 to 4 feet in the air. The trick I learned to do in those situations was to stick my arm closest to the wave down while at the top of a skip and when I came down my arm penetrated the water causing me to pivot around that arm doing a 270 degree spin which placed my fins at the top of the wave. Then if I wanted to go on I would takeoff again. I had waves where I did the skipping 5 times in a row and making all the ways across the beach to the very end of the break as far as you could ride it.

[oldmansurfer]

Some things I learned bodysurfing that helped me surfing. One is to not fight the ocean. It's going to do what it's going to do and struggling while underwater is only going to use up vital oxygen. Likewise there are currents that you can overcome paddling and some that you can't and much in between. If it's at the in between most likely it will a better experience to do something other than fighting the current. I already knew to not struggle underwater. The way I learned about not struggling while underwater was another bodysurfer who passed this message on to me. The first time I used that information wasn't bodysurfing. I was jumping off a bridge over a river mouth near the beach. There was always a variable amount of sand beneath the bridge and we learned to check before diving. It could be 1 foot deep or 20 feet deep and not always obvious from the bridge around 15 to 20 foot above the water. That day we checked to see how deep it was and it was really deep so no worries. I decided to see how far out from the bridge I could jump since it was such a good day. What I didn't know is there was another bridge that had been taken out by a tsunami in that area. It had railroad rails on it for the sugarcane trains that brought the sugarcane from the fields to the mill. One of the rails was sticking straight up and had rusted to a point. That point went into my calf muscle and I was stuck impaled on this sharp metal piece. I tried to swim off it and was unable to and panicked . I tried even harder to get free and was starting to feel my lungs burn but I remembered the instructions to not do that so I calmed down and thought about the situation. I could see that might be the end of me and my friends would have to come pull my body off the spike. I thought maybe I can push off the bottom to get my leg off the spike. It was so tall that I could barely touch the bottom so that wasn't going to work. I thought about what other skills I had that might help and realized I had agile toes and could grab things. I recall thinking of myself as a "monkey boy" so I grabbed the spike with the toes of my free foot and was able to extract myself from the spike by pulling the leg upward with my hands while grabbing the spike with my toes. I swam up to the surface and warned my friends to not jump out as I did. They of course did not believe me as I had pranked them over and over again on the bridge because I could hold my breath for a long time. I would stay down like a minute and then surface with them worrying about me and I would make up a story about me fighting a shark or some silly thing. I had to show them the wound on the back of my leg before they believed me.

The next time I used that instruction was bodysurfing big waves. I was at Brenneke's and it was breaking with 15 to 20 foot faces which was bigger than anything I had bodysurfed up to that time. The first wave held me under for I guessed around 30 seconds. There was a similar characteristic wipeout that I have only experienced there on big days. Basically it's just the drop and maybe a little more then you get sucked over the falls and driven down to the bottom. Usually you don't touch the bottom because there is a cushion of water bouncing back up but it picks you back up and over in a big semicircle then back down toward the bottom. On the very biggest wave maybe it did this six times then you went into the washing machine cycle where you flew every which way and could barely hold you limbs in alignment. During the first part it was slower and you had time to orient yourself for impact in case you did touch the bottom but in the washing machine cycle there was no way to do that but I would try to keep track of which way was down if possible. Just as violent as that was it just suddenly stopped and you were in water that you could touch the bottom in. I never hit the bottom in the washing machine cycle. But as this went on and on that first time I had in my mind the idea that maybe it would go on longer than I could hold my breath. I came in after that because it alarmed me how long I was held under. I walked up on the beach and another bodysurfer I kind of knew was there. I told him I think I was held under for 30 seconds. He responded "No. It was 28 seconds. I was keeping track on my watch. You were held under for 28 seconds but I was held under for 30 seconds." I looked at him and realized there was some degree of a joke there because he couldn't keep track of how long he was held under even if he did have a watch. That would require him looking at his watch right before he went under. Not likely. I asked what he did in that situation and he said there's nothing you can do just wait it out. So we rested a bit and went back in. Every single wave held me under like around 30 seconds but that was it.

I found that you could maybe escape from the wave if you contact the bottom. There is about a second of time after it lets up and before it sucks you back up that you can push off the bottom and head back out to sea (you need to stay very close to the bottom). While it would get you out of the wave if you are successful if you are not then you just wasted a bunch of oxygen and were going through the whole thing anyway with less oxygen than if you didn't try. Another option if you contact the bottom is to shoot up to the surface and get a breath. This seemed to not be needed or particularly helpful because it was always within my breath holding limit.

On some waves you can't paddle well enough to catch the wave and end up in free fall. In that case I dive and turn rapidly so I don't hit the bottom then swim like hell back out to sea. In that situation I had a high probability of making it out of the waves grasp as long as I didn't swim too high off the bottom.

The idea of currents was something a family friend taught me when talking about bodysurfing. He was a diver and planned his dives using the currents. Basically all the currents go in a circle. If you are near a beach it will go back to the shore somewhere down the line. Out at sea all bets are off since the circle may go hundred of miles. I learned to get out of the current by swimming parallel to the beach to come in if it was a strong current going out.

[oldmansurfer]

Another thing I learned from bodysurfing that applies to surfing was a thing I just did for fun bodysurfing. Sometimes I was inside too far for a set wave coming in and I tried going up the face of the wave. It's easy enough to go through or under the wave but just for fun I tried goin up the face and I found there was a boost upward if you time it right. Hit the exactly right spot and you will be airborne maybe 6 or 8 feet above the top of the wave. This was really fun and it also allowed me to look out over the tops of the waves which for bodysurfing was nearly impossible otherwise. I could see if there was another set wave coming in and how far out it was. There are times surfing where you are too far inside of a set wave maybe in the 6 to 10 foot range comes and if you are paddling already a good option is to keep paddling up the face of the wave. If the timing is right you will launch off the wave or punch through the lip if it pitches over you. While I learned it bodysurfing the first time I did it surfing was because one of the bradas, the guys I surfed with all the time, told me to do that as he was right next to me and the set was coming in. I knew this maneuver so went along with him up the face of the wave and we both punched through the lip.

I have done this successfully on a 14 foot kayak on waves larger than 14 foot faces. I have also done it few more times surfing but it is all about the timing. Generally I am paddling to get over a wave but I'm too late however it hasn't pitched over by the time I reach the base of the wave and pitches over as I paddle up the face that's the one to do it on. If you can do a really deep duck dive that might be an option as well.

The times that I was bodysurfing and couldn't make it down the face because it was too big I learned to push off the lip to clear the wave and free fall unhindered by the lip to the bottom. On those rare instances surfing where I fail to catch the wave and fail to pull back before it's too late, I push away from my board to make free myself from both lip and board. I push the board to the side if possible. This works with a leash for me anyway and although it may look like a terrible wipeout it's usually very mild. I think the dive from the top penetrates the length of the leash and pulls the tail down then the water moving forward from the wave pushes the board down as well passing over it.

[oldmansurfer]

One of the things I did body surfing that I never tried surfing was another maneuver for when you failed to catch a wave and are going to get sucked over the falls. I did this instead of a free fall on a big wave. What I did was to tuck into the wave right at the top. Mostly this was for show on a big day with a big crowd but I might do it if I was bored. Right as the wave is about to pitch over I turn down and flip over. This makes me stuck in the lip going over the falls feet first. If I do it just right my face will be out of the water and I can stick my arms out of the water and wave at the people watching or give them a peace sign or a shaka or sometimes hold my nose like a kook does jumping into the water. I felt it was my job to entertain the crowd on the beach. The result is I am going to get drilled into the bottom so as I go out of sight I orient myself into hands and knees position so when contact with the bottom occurs (and it will) then I am in the right posture to survive it. Or I can wait till the bottom comes and then go into hands and knees as I am pushed down into the bottom. So when my feet hit I bend my knees and bend at the waist so my hands come down locked and ready. The full force of the lip will land on me for a second or two and let up then after another second or two it will start to pull me upwards and go into the cycle I explained above. However that one second in between is enough time to push off the bottom toward the open ocean and swim out of the wave close to the bottom. I had a very high rate of success getting out of the wave this way so I didn't mind that one second or so full force from the lip. You might wonder how crazy I had to be to come up with this trick? LOL I don't blame you but it was a mistake at first I was trying to dive down into the wave and escape that way but instead just got caught up in the lip and realized it wasn't too bad. Now if I were somehow in this position on a wave from surfing I would attempt to do this as well but never have I been there from surfing. Again this looks like the worst wipeout but not so bad in reality because it is sand. If it were reef I probably would never do this on purpose. Brenneke's had a small beach but the beach goers had a good view of the break. I guess that people could figure after watching me do this over and over again that it wasn't too bad from my perspective.

[oldmansurfer]

Wile bodysurfing, I also learned to do a shoulder roll in those cases where I found myself heading toward the bottom head first. Many people bodysurfing at Brenneke's beach would end up with broken arms because they put their arm out to stop their fall. I probably saw 3 or 4 broken arms there and a single neck injury from hitting their head into the sand. In situations where I was headed head down toward the bottom I put my arm bent at 90 degrees at the elbow over my head and adjusted my positioning so that I would roll from the arm/elbow to shoulder to back. It's a Judo roll. You learn this at the very basic level of Judo. They just teach you how to fall because Judo is about throws and in order to survive them you need to learn how to fall without getting hurt. I think my parents recognized this is a skill that I should have so enrolled me in Judo classes. I never went very far in Judo but learned really well how to fall. On many occasions bodysurfing I did a shoulder roll. Surfing I did it only once (that I remember) on a reef and ended up with minimal injuries which I mentioned previously at Waikokos. I was in the tube backside and trying to get some speed so I did a little speed pump and my head hit the lip and the lip gradually started pulling my head over. Eventually it pulled me off the board and drove me head first toward the bottom and knowing what was coming planned on a shoulder roll before I did it. I think the water was very shallow there like 3 feet or so. Good thing there was no wana (sea urchins).

[oldmansurfer]

Perhaps Judo would be good for surfers or bodysurfers to learn. When I learned it the first two weeks were entirely just slapping the mat. Laying on your back you roll to one side and slap the mat on that side then over to the other side and slap the mat on that side and laying flat on your back you slap both sides simultaneously. From there you may go to learning to do a shoulder roll accompanied by a mat slap when you land on your back. It really makes you relatively safe from falling. I probably could have been a stuntman. When I was a kid I fell down the stairs and it hurt. No serious injuries but really sore. Then I was watching a movie and an actor (probably a stuntman) fell down the stairs. I noticed how he went down on his hands and knees and wondered if I could do that and if it would not result in me getting my breath taken away by the pain like the last time. So I tried it and wow! it didn't even hurt. I showed my mom what I learned (of course she freaked out) and I think that and other falling episodes is why she put me in Judo classes. By the way if you have to jump out of a fast moving car try to land sideways on your hands and knees. I would practice judo at home on the shag carpet living room area. I became very confident in my ability to fall and would stand on a chair in the living room and tell my friends to say which way they wanted me to fall and fell off the chair in whatever direction they wanted. That skill came in handy to me a bunch of times besides bodysurfing or surfing. I once tripped and fell head first about 6 feet onto an asphalt paved area and was completely uninjured and stood back up so fast no one saw me and my friends with me thought I jumped down. In my teens I did daredevil stuff like climb on the roof and dive head first off the roof doing a shoulder roll. I did that only twice but it was successful. The first time I was too vertical and felt some extra pressure on my back so I did it again and dove outward pushing away from the roof so I had forward momentum but also less distance to fall as it lowered my center of gravity before I actually fell. I rolled so much that the slap didn't stop me and I came to my feet and then did a somersault landing flat on my back slapping with both hands to lessen the impact. I bet my parents would have changed their minds about getting me Judo classes if they knew I was going to do stuff like that. LOL But still it was good to have those skills surfing.

[oldmansurfer]

One of the other falls I had that might have made my parents put me in Judo class was an interesting story. We had a cat when I was a kid named Popoki (Hawaiian for cat). It was a really incredible hunter and one of the amazing things it used to do was to climb up our mango tree in a second or two and grab a bird right off the branches. I watched him do this numerous times and his approach was not visible to the bird so he would go up the opposite side of the tree from the bird to the height of the bird and come around and suddenly appear right next to it. Very fast and the birds apparently had no time to escape. I always thought Popoki was using his claws to climb but noticed a pattern that he did every time. There were three bumps in the trunk of the tree and his feet hit those three bumps every time he climbed. Cool that he had figured out where those bumps were and made good use of them but then I started thinking maybe I can use those same bumps to do the same thing. And sure enough I could I could climb up to about 8 or 10 feet in a second or two by running at the tree and using the bumps for footholds. The momentum from running at the tree held me on those bumps well enough to get up the tree. Of course I had to show off to someone so it was my parents. I ran up the tree and was standing and bouncing with joy on a branch about 8 to 10 feet off the ground. So proud of myself till the branch I was bouncing on broke and I fell flat on my back on the ground. My parents rushed over and were asking me over and over "Are you okay? Are you okay?" I couldn't answer because I had the breath knocked out of me and couldn't speak. They started shouting at each other about calling the ambulance and I realized I needed to let them know I was okay just had the breath knocked out of me so I nodded my head and squeaked out "I'm okay." then after a few more seconds I sat up and told them I was fine and just had the breath knocked out of me. Their response was "Your never climbing another tree." Anyway they had heard that Judo was good for kids that fell a lot so I had the fortunate experience of learning how to fall without getting hurt.