![]() ![]() ![]() “Clyde wants to do it if it’s just 20′ feet Chris Owens on KHON News 943pm last night.Įnd of 3 month waiting period is end of this month. Uncle Clyde Aikau sent message out late today. The BIG WNW is not expected to hit Waimea Bay up to the Aikau ‘Ohana standard. There’s a small pack in Memory of Eddie Aikau who would probably surf 8 hours straight □ SNN It dropped to 8′ 18 sec so that’s all she wrote on this one… normally 10-18sec would easily be enough for 20′ sets on a NW but again the above factors playing in. The World Surf League launches the 2021 Championship Tour in December with broadcast-only. There’s partial shadowing by Ni’ihau and Kauai (anything under 294 degrees).Īlso, the beast of a storm kept its distance (~1500 miles) thus more swell decay and trickery for Waimea’s special bathymetry.ġ0am WW3 shows 10′ 18 sec at Waimea. Surf Meets Return To Maui and Oahus North Shore This Winter. This year, this latest swell… had too many questions & doubts about the XL WNW (290-310). The waiting period has always been between December 1 through February 28. But this year, with new event organizers comes a new format. Surf at the Bay had to be 15-25′ average with contestable conditions for a full 8 ‘prime’ hours. The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational has been a staple in our local history for over the last three decades. The surfing event is the first which held standards so literally ‘high’ that it would not run annually (only as Mother Nature had allowed). Though ‘The Eddie’ started in 1984 at Sunset Beach, it’s been held at Waimea Bay ever since. Eddie Aikau saw big wave surfing not as a competition but as a personal goal. As a competitor, his best contest result was a win in the 1977 Duke Kahanamoku Invitational Surfing Championship. We’re surfing in the spirit of Eddie,’ ” Coleman said.The Eddie Aikau Invitational at Waimea Bay is the most prestigious & culturally significant surf contest in the world. An Accomplished Big Wave Surfer Eddie took on every major swell to come through the North Shore from 1967 to 1978. “They always say at the opening ceremony, where they gather to launch the holding period, ’This is not just a contest. The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational The Eddie gets yellow alert by: Linda Dela Cruz Posted: / 07:17 PM HST Updated: / 09:43 PM HST Get news on the go with KHON. And this year female surfers competed alongside the men for the first time in the 39-year history of The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational. Coast Guard rescued the remaining crew a few hours later after being alerted by a commercial plane that spotted the canoe.Ĭoleman said The Eddie is about the best of big-wave surfing and the best of Hawaiian culture. Aikau volunteered to paddle several miles to nearby Lanai Island on his surfboard to get help for the rest of the crew but was never seen again. ![]() Just hours out of port, the giant double-hulled canoe known as the Hokulea took on water and overturned in stormy weather. He is also famous for surfing towering waves that no one else would dare ride.Īikau died in 1978 at the age of 31 during an expedition to sail a traditional Polynesian voyaging canoe from Honolulu to Tahiti. “What makes this contest the most unique is that it’s in memory of a particular individual who really has transcended his time and place when he lived,” said Coleman, who wrote “Eddie Would Go,” a biography of Aikau.Įdward Ryon Makuahanai Aikau rose to prominence as the first lifeguard hired by Honolulu to work on Oahu’s North Shore and was revered for saving over 500 people during his career. ![]() But author Stuart Coleman says The Eddie is distinguished by how it honors Eddie Aikau, a legendary Native Hawaiian waterman, for his selflessness, courage and sacrifice. The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational, known as the Eddie, is held only when wave faces are consistently larger than 40 feet at Waimea Bay, a rarity. Other places around the world have big wave surfing events: Mavericks in California, Nazare in Portugal and Peahi on Hawaii’s Maui Island. “It’s amazing, it’s really cool to see and it’s such a rare and prestigious event, and there’s a lot of energy and a lot of buzz around, for sure,” he said. By local scale, they’ll call those waves 25 feet - and we’ve seen a couple sets like that already,” Kevin Wallis, director of forecasting at, said by phone Sunday morning. “We’ve been looking at 30-foot to 40-foot wave faces for the most part, (and) the biggest waves of the day are going to be in excess of 45 feet. One huge wave swept onto the beach and hit a family, sweeping a baby under a house, but the child was not injured, Hawaii News Now reported. On Sunday, the sets were already big, with the swell expected to grow as the day went on, and an estimated 60,000 people packed the beaches and surrounding area to catch a glimpse of the spectacle. ![]()
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