GRAHAM EZZY
Rivers of sweat washed the sunscreen off my face. The day was not hot and the only activity I engaged in was watching a bunch of tourists launch off the rocks at Jaws. I sweat the watery, odourless sweat of saunas – the perspiration of fear. I was scared. A relentless and barrelling shore break hit the rocks that are the beach at Jaws. The tourists were in the process of swimming out with their windsurfing gear. The “beach” at Jaws is not really a beach but a gulch carved by the stream that flows from the Kaupakalua reservoir to the sea. There is no sand, only slippery boulders. The path down to sea level is a steep winding trail through ironwood pine trees, which are skinny and stunted from the sea-air.
After 20 minutes of waiting while holding his rigged windsurfer, Thomas Traversa scrambled like a crab across the rocks towards the ocean and swam holding on to his back footstrap to drag his equipment with him – the windline sat forty metres off the shore. The shorebreak paused for only 20 seconds, barely giving Thomas enough time to reach safety before the waves returned. Aleix Sanllehy attempted launching after Thomas. He mistimed and a man-high white water climbed over him and pushed him back and beneath his sail. He tried to stand but his foot was stuck between boulders and the weight of the sea pressed against the surface area of his sail. I turned away because I did not want to see his leg break. I climbed back up the cliff to my pickup truck.
Maybe my recollection sounds melodramatic, but you must understand that this is the scale of Jaws. Everything is bigger and more powerful – the consequences more dire, more real.
On Maui, tourists are always doing stupid shit and dying. The rules of engagement don’t always make sense to outsiders. Currents can’t be seen, and certain tourists think it ridiculous that they would be unable to swim back to shore. Yet, an Olympic swimmer drowned on Maui while swimming against a current. Same with flash floods. It rains on Maui more than almost anywhere else in the world, and that water can come rushing down dry river beds and carry people and cars into rocks and off cliffs and into the sea. “It looks fine. I can handle a little flooding,” is a common reaction to the “Flash Flooding Warning” signposts on the trailheads after a heavy rain. And despite my current morbidity, most of these tourists don’t actually die. They hike, the flood never comes, and life goes on. But when the floods do flash, the water knocks over their Jeep Wranglers and they drown. Those who live are just lucky. The survivors are not brave, just ignorant of the danger.
The whole problem is that most of the time, nothing happens. But when something does happen, the consequences can be catastrophic. The local rules are heuristics passed down from generation to generation – a collective wisdom. One of these rules is that locals don’t launch off the rocks at Jaws. I’m not sure why. It’s just something we don’t do. I have sailed Jaws more times than I can count, but until that day, I’d never launched off the rocks at the base of the Pe’ahi cliff. I guess the shorebreak is too powerful and the current too strong. Luck becomes too big of a factor. Locals go to Jaws with boats or jet skis. Or, we launch elsewhere – Ho’okipa, Maliko, the Lighthouse. I have a favourite spot to launch, just to the right of the rocks at the Haiku Lighthouse where Robby Naish famously launched in the movie RIP (see YouTube). But ever since the timing chain blew on my Land Rover, I’ve been without a vehicle capable of making the off-road drive through the pineapple fields to the Lighthouse. I grew up swimming off the north shore cliffs. On winter nights, the thunder of Jaws could be heard from my crib. I’ve had to swim in from Jaws after crashing and breaking my gear. And yet, I was scared to go off the rocks – I was more scared to go off the rocks than to sail Jaws. And I was scared for these tourists who were also my friends.