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Honolua Bay, HI
Summary
“But as fast as the media picked up on the place – it burned out. It became “A Place in Space” and when the giant winter swells hit, The Bay was where it was happening.”
The Bay, Randy Rarick, Surfing Magazine, April 1977
First of all, let’s bid a tearful aloha to Woody Brown, a resident of this earth for 96 years and resident of Maui for about 20 of those years. Brown lived an adventurous life that most of us can only hope for, and he passed away recently, ready for the next big adventure.
Honolua Bay was for many years the most famous surf spot on Maui, the star of surf movies from The Performers in 1965 to Free Ride in 1977. During the late 60s, Honolua Bay was the high performance wave where Bob McTavish and Nat Young worked the bugs out of their new Vee bottomed modern machines. The footage of them going fast and fluid on those long, winding walls appeared in The Hot Generation in 1968 and inspired a flood of locals and coast haole.
Honolua up to 1975 was regulated by the fact that if you lost your board, your board was history and maybe you were, too. According to Matt Warshaw in the Encyclopedia of Surfing: “The development of the surf leash in the early 70s brought an end to the Honolua idyll, as the intermediate level surfer could ride without losing his board. Surfer Magazine described Honolua ‘Paradise Lost’ by 1975; five years later, Surf magazine alerted its East Coast readership to steer clear of the break altogether, warning of crowds, fights and car rip-offs.”
In 1977, Mark Richards and Honolua Bay co-starred in one of the most memorable sequences of Bill Delaney’s Free Ride. Richards wore yellow and red, Honolua was big and blue and the two made beautiful music together, Richards odd, knock-kneed “Wounded Gull” stance somehow doing justice to absolutely perfect, 6 to 8-foot Maui wowie walls. Mark Richards went on to describe Honolua Bay as “the ultimate wave; the best wave in the world.”
Mark Richard’s Free Ride segment and his superlatives damned the place a little farther, into the present situation.
Honolua began to fade going into the 80s, perhaps because of local pressure on the media to take the pressure off their fickle, overrun spot. Just up the road, the spot known as Peahi to the locals and Jaws to the rest of the world began to emerge in the 90s, and usurped Honolua Bay as the most famous spot on Maui.
Which was fine with the locals, many of whom moved from somewhere in Hawaii or around the world just to be close to the place. There is a large brigade of surfers who live for Honolua Bay, and they are happy that the spotlight has shifted to east.
There is a reason www.surfline.com doesn’t even have a surf map or spot guide for Maui or Kauai. Whether that is threats or co-conspiracy, who knows?
Because the truth is: the spotlight is elsewhere, but the wave remains the same.
The Good
Ask Mark Richards about The Good. Or if you can’t find MR, check out this YouTube of The Bay, shot on Easter Day, 2007 and brought to you by Lightning Bolt Maui.
That’s The Bay at what Hawaiians would call four feet and the rest of the world would call six foot plus.
Here is another YouTube taken during a Legends contest by Robb Gardner and Mike Mackey in 2006.
Keep it quiet, but Honolua Bay hasn’t changed much since the 1970s, and it’s still one of the best waves in the world. All the power and length you could ever want, with the Caves section hucking out a sure thing.
And it’s picturesque, too, as it is in Hawaii, with the clouds and the sun and the sky and all that, with that view of Lanai off in the distance.
The Bad
You don’t want to get caught inside at Honolua Bay on a 10-foot day. You will get your ass kicked to within an inch of your life – blub blub blub – and you will see stars. That is bad.
Getting down the cliff on a rainy day and getting all muddy and almost slipping and falling onto lava rock is potentially bad.
The fact that Honolua Bay lies dead flat for about half the year is bad, although it’s great if you are a sailor needing a safe anchorage, or a snorkeler.
And the surf leash was a bad idea too, because it no longer divided a crowd by ability, and the ongoing repercussions are still felt at places like Honolua. If they made the spot no leashes it would cut the crowd significantly and leave it to surfers who know how to surf and hold onto their boards, but that ain’t gonna happen.
The Strange
In the first week of December 1969, that same giant winter swell that made history at Makaha also lit up Honolua Bay. We can only imagine what Jaws was like on that swell, but Honolua Bay was 15-foot-plus and absolutely off its nut. During the week that Greg Noll rode a historically giant wave at Makaha, a fan was killed by the Hells Angels at a Rolling Stones concert in Altamont, California. That same week, the police trotted out Charles Manson as the monster behind the cult responsible for the Tate/Labianca murders. And that week was the first draft lottery since the Vietnam War.
As the ocean was going berserk, surfers were riding the End of the World swell, more than a little concerned about the Fight or Flight decision they would have to make if their birthday came up high in the lottery: “NEED A QUOTE ABOUT THIS FROM LEONARD BRADY.”
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