Aboard the Kahanu

SURF REPORT

15 September 2009

Up at six and down to Port Allen to catch the Kahanu to the Na Pali Coast. The Kahanu is a forty foot power catamaran with twin 250 outboard Yamahas on it. Kahanu is also the name of our captain. If an episode of the Simpsons is ever conceived with such a boat in the script, Captain Kahanu is definitely in it, and maybe even his mate, Kainalu. Both of them have Niihau blood in them, so they are powerdog Hawaiian on their game and for the most part very entertaining but still slight caricatures. Kainalu is a master of exaggeration. I never call him on any of it so he feels free to aggrandize even more. The sixty pound pigs he shot up mauka in the Pali and packed-out over his shoulder have become two-hunrit-poundahs. He says he rides forty foot surf, but even if its twenty that’s praiseworthy enough. In other ways, its obvious modern social sentiments have had no effect on him. Eighteen other tourists are aboard the Kahanu as we plow northwestward toward the steep northern cliffs of Kauai. Niihau and little Lehua are off to our left.

The key feature of my trip is the surf information that Kainalu is willing to divulge. Mile after mile (17 miles) he points out break after break by name and provides folkloricgems including point of entry secrets about some of them. His lack of circumspection is appalling. He obviously doesn’t know I write a famous surf blog.

“ The Robinsons didn’t like everybody going through their cattle pasture to surf Pikalas. They told their cowboys to warn people once, and then if they caught ‘em again to just tie them by the heels and drag them back to the road. Well, after awhile this was not popular with the authorities. So the Robinsons, they stuck some bulls in the pasture. That kept people out for awhile. But then somebody got hurt by a bull so they gave up and now people can go through the pasture. Its not too crowded because its too far out of town.”

“There you got Intersections, First Ditch, Last Ditch. Family Housings.” Nobody is riding any of this and its still shoulder high. On the way out of the harbor, two decent A frames are working in front of the jetty. I ask why they are not ridden (like hidden volcanic outcrop or some other menace).

“ Not beeg enough.”

We snorkel in the murky water on the north shore west of Haena, made cloudy by the now-declining north swell that was hitting for the past four days. The cliffs are steep. The caves are awesome, even if Mary J. Blige borrowed one for an MTV video and 007 flew a chopper through another. Somehow these commercializations diminish their grandeur-all of a sudden I am in Anaheim. Kainalu just got through telling us that only the queen could swim in these caverns and that the kings are buried nearby, but now we got vodka ads shot here.

On the way back, Captain Kahanu takes a long beachward jog inside at Point Mana, and you can see that those southern lefts, which are already makeable at waist high, should be pretty amusing walls with just a bit more size. Its probably a one hundred yard break, more if you can hook up the sections.

For the past three days the tradewinds have ceased to blow. I could have surfed the windward side, especially the far side of Anahola Bay at Unreals. Nobody was out and I didn’t want to to paddle all the way out there by myself. It might be the same at Family Housing. Nobody is out because nobody is out. Its not like I never surfed by myself at some spooky place. I solo’d out at Goat I sland a few times, and Poles plenty. But now its different. I would have gone out at Unreals or Graveyards if I was not by myself. How can you surf graveyards by yourself, after all?

Late this afternoon I paddled out at Hanalei for a farewell. A squadron of SUP masters out squashing the leftovers on the point, and some wahines on the bowl. It was a privilege to ride behind them.