Against my call it was up at 4am to drive down to the launching ramp in Kahului. After just finishing a novel on Bonn Scott from AC/DC – Highway to Hell – having the song come on the radio on the way to sail Jaws for your first time wasn’t really the best sign for someone who’s a bit of believer in omens, and it kind of put me on edge for the day.
The pre-dawn light also made it feel kind of moody as we loaded up the SUP and windsurf gear and bashed into the wind. It was already blowing fairly strong and was a bit of a mission to boat all the way to Jaws from the harbour, but low tide at [alternative launch] Maliko Gulch dictated this was our only option.
On the way we passed one tow team at Outer Sprecks, but I’m pretty clueless how the coast looks from the ocean side and was thinking it didn’t look that big, and doubted whether Jaws would actually be breaking.
It’s quite an ominous arena as you pull into the cliff lined bay and see the plumes of spray flying off of the back of the waves. I’m always a little nervous sailing a wave for the first time anywhere, so it’s little wonder there were a couple of butterfly’s in my belly – thanks Bonn!
First up out of the boat were the SUP crew of Campbell, Bart and Zane. It wasn’t big by Jaws standards but there were some decent slabs coming through and you certainly wouldn’t want to be caught out of position. There was a lot of wind and bump on the take-off for the paddlers that made it look really difficult. A lot of attempts to get on a wave resulted in either being blown or bumped off.
Laird Hamilton and Kai Lenny were out there on their SUPs with Laird getting a few on the left and later Kai joined him. One clean up set dragged Bart all the way to the rocks with everyone else losing their paddles. Campbell got into a fairly decent sized wave once he got his paddle back and reached for his longer board, which allowed him to scratch into another. After great perseverance Bart and Zane shared a ride, doing really well to hold it together. It first looked like the wind was going to flip them on take-off before they had a big hole in the wave face to deal with half way down.