Fleeting security on North Shore
HALEIWA, Hawaii — Far from the mainland and the 49ers’ quest for a championship, my family vacation was about two hours old when we faced the prospect of evacuation. Barely settled into our rented beachfront home on the North Shore of Oahu, we watched a massive wooden deck break off a neighbor’s house and collapse into the sea, there to be crushed and splintered into useless debris.
A full-blown crisis of erosion had hit our little stretch of surfing’s mecca. An 18-foot swell was in progress, the beach had disappeared and waves were quickly dismantling precious property. Whatever fronted a halfdozen homes — deck, lanai, lawn, embank-
ment — was either destroyed or about to be washed away. (To this day, one of the homes teeters on the edge of a 20-foot bluff, certain to be lost in time.)
Sudden deterioration
Our place, owned by an Austrian windsurfer/ skier, seemed to be better fortified than the rest. But suddenly there were cracks, growing larger by the hour, on the surface of our deck. It began to sag and tilt, as if eventually to separate from the house altogether. Surveying this scene of rapid deterioration, my wife and daughter joined me in concluding, “We’ve got to get out of here.”
We called some friends and were offered refuge at a safe place about 3 miles up the road. We moved virtually all of our belongings there, all the while awaiting word from our Colorado-based landlord. Around nightfall, he assured us the house was secure, and that he’d be on the next flight out.
That was nearly two weeks ago. While local residents and their friends engaged in desperate recovery measures with tarps, sandbags and wooden blockades (the big swells subsided, creating a narrow and much-needed stretch of beach), our house held up. There was no further damage to the deck. And I was reminded once again: paradise can be fleeting in the place where everything revolves around the pounding surf.
No hotels in area
There are no hotels on the North Shore’s socalled “seven-mile miracle” because the ocean gets a bit disruptive at times. Virtually everyone living at or near the beach has some sort of direct connection to the sea. I first came here 40 years ago ( January 1974), and in returning each winter, I’ve noticed no significant change in the architecture, the landscape or even the town of Haleiwa. That’s why I keep coming back, occasionally with a big surprise in store.
In 1982, I huddled inside a beachfront bungalow while Hurricane Iwa raged overnight, leaving considerable destruction in its wake. Somehow my place held up, but four years later, it was damaged beyond repair by a “rogue” wave that slammed into the homes along Ke Iki Road with full force around midnight. I still don’t know how I survived it. I came to my senses in a standing position, sand and saltwater in my hair, basically unhurt as I waded through broken glass and shattered wood and noticed that the metal frame of my bed, where I’d been sleeping, was grotesquely twisted and bent.
Waves in other places
The strange part about this latest episode is that a truly giant swell — 30 feet on the island scale, or more than 50 feet on the face — was not involved. The process of erosion began in summer, when locals noticed that the customarily calm seas had not caused the annual buildup of sand. The surf season brought a steady stream of west swells from an angle so extreme, the onrushing whitewater affected shoreline property in a manner unseen for decades.
Then again, this has been a crazy season in the world of big-wave surfing. With a persistent high-pressure system lingering over Northern California, Mavericks (in Half Moon Bay) has produced only a couple of rideable days and nothing close to the giant surf required to hold its annual contest. Hawaii’s equivalent, the Eddie Aikau invitational at Waimea Bay, still awaits that first A-1 swell.
Meanwhile, the Atlantic Ocean is booming off the charts. So much huge surf has pounded the coastlines of Ireland, Portugal, Spain and France since the onset of autumn, it’s being called Europe’s “most consistent string of radical storms in the modern era of big-wave surfing” by Bill Sharp, event director of the annual Billabong XXL awards.
European surfing
In late October, Brazilian surfer Carlos Burle rode a wave estimated to be nearly 100 feet (a world record, if officially confirmed) at Nazare, off the coast of Portugal. A memorable contest took place last month in the Basque country of Spain, and the top three finishers, in order, were Mavericks regulars Grant “Twiggy” Baker, Nic Lamb and Kenny Collins. This week, the socalled “Winter Storm Hercules” has moved on from the Midwest and Northeast and into the Atlantic, forecast to produce perhaps the largest surf ever ridden in Europe.
Not that Hawaii has vanished from relevance. Record crowds packed the beach in mid-December to watch 41-year-old Kelly Slater take on superstars nearly half his age at the storied Pipeline Masters. It was the final event on the pro tour, and Slater fell short of his 12th world title because the eventual winner, Mick Fanning, had stockpiled a sizable points advantage. And yet, in epic conditions, Slater won the contest for the seventh time, schooling all those hotshot kids and proving once again that he ranks with the all-time greatest athletes in any sport. Some things never change.