The perfect Hawaiian wave

By Tracy Cabot and Marshall Whitfield

© HTA/Tor Johnson

You’ve always imagined what it would be like, borne on the breast of an ocean wave, balancing gracefully as your trusty surfboard glides you to shore, where admiring friends await.

Instead, you’ve driven for an hour, gotten lost twice, and are finally standing at the water’s edge, a rental board under your arm, staring out at a perfectly flat ocean. Snorkelers paddling through the glassy water are giggling at you.

Perhaps you’re on the wrong island. Or the wrong side of the right island.

Hawaii deserves its reputation as the world’s mecca of surfing, but that doesn’t mean the perfect wave awaits you wherever you go. If you’re unfamiliar with the islands, planning ahead can make all the difference between experiencing the thrill of surfing or days of frustration.

One problem with “planning ahead” is that if you call the typical surf school in Hawaii to make a reservation, you’ll be told not to worry: their instructors are experienced in finding perfect waves for beginners year-round. Similarly, board rental shops will tell you to just come by any morning and they’ll give you directions to where you’ll find the waves you’re looking for.

On any given day, any one of them could be right. But you only have, say, 10 days of vacation time. So at the cost of aggravating our friends in surf shops and schools, we will give you the real inside scoop about Hawaiian waves and be ruthless in narrowing down where you’re most likely to find the perfect wave at what time of year.

First, what is the “perfect wave” for a beginner or novice? It’s an ocean swell, generated by a distant storm, which peaks at a height of two to three feet as it approaches shore. Ideally, a light offshore wind smoothes the wave before it peaks, and then it breaks very gradually (allowing you time to stand up), winding up on a sandy beach.

In contrast, what you don’t want are “wind waves.” These are generated by local winds blowing onshore. They are chaotic in shape and difficult to ride.

Hawaii’s beloved trade winds, balmy breezes which blow in from the east, generate these kinds of choppy “wind waves.” So, as a first step in planning, consult any simple map of the Hawaiian Island chain, which runs from Kauai in the northwest to Big Island in the southeast. Cross off the east sides of all islands as prospective places to stay. (Our apologies to Hana.)

By further process of ruthless elimination, we can quickly home in on your best surfing locations. The islands get surfable waves from the west, but very inconsistently, so cross off all west coasts, including the many popular resorts on Big Island and Maui (such as Kona Village and Kaanapali Beach).

In addition to waves, you’ll need an infrastructure of surf schools and surfboard rental shops. This requirement eliminates the remaining sides of Big Island and Maui, as well as all of Molokai and Lanai. Which leaves Oahu and Kauai.

Now, timing. During the winter months of October through February, the most consistent waves hit Oahu and Kauai from the north. During most of the rest of the year, waves come from the south. The north and south shores of both islands offer a wide selection of hotels, condos and B&Bs, as well as ample surf infrastructure. Those are your four best options. In any of those areas, you’ll be in Surf City, USA.

Keokea Beach, © BIVB

Which doesn’t mean the surf is equal or even similar between the north shore/winter season areas and the south shore/summer season areas. Take Oahu’s north shore in the winter, for example.

The final events in the world surfing championship take place here in November and December. The competitors start drifting into town in October, like gunfighters in the old west. They come from Chile, Australia, Brazil, South Africa—hard-muscled young men with fierce eyes—bearing little resemblance to the happy-go-lucky surfer dudes of the Beach Boys’ songs. They arrive with different reef scars and different languages and mix uneasily with the Hawaiian big-wave riders. The atmosphere is electric.

The winter waves range from occasionally small to usually big—too big for most surfers, including monsters up to 40 feet, terrifying yet mesmerizing to watch. If you stand on the beach at Pipeline, where the big surf breaks closest to shore, you can feel the ground shake.

If you choose to be here for the show, you’ll be rubbing shoulders with the world’s best surfers, but the waves may never get small enough for you to surf. Your upside is a front-row seat for the greatest surf-watching on the planet. And if the waves decline for a few days, you’ll be able to say you once surfed Oahu’s legendary north shore. Try to stay somewhere between Waimea Bay and Sunset Beach. And book early—very early.

Winter season on Kauai has essentially the same waves as Oahu, but no contests. Here too, occasional periods of small waves occur in the winter, but more often the surf is what skiers would call Double Diamond.

Even the long sand beach at Hanalei Bay, while hauntingly beautiful, can lure you into a booming, dangerous shore break. The tiny town at Hanalei Bay features an artsy, hippy, end-of-the-Earth ambiance favored by many visitors. But with few lifeguards, Kauai’s north shore is no place for a beginning surfer whose eagerness can override his fear.

To sum up winter surfing in Hawaii, plan on a full-immersion plunge into Hawaii’s surf culture, but not a lot of learning-size waves. Nevertheless, as surfers ourselves, we know the last thing a would-be surfer wants to hear is “stay out of the water,” so here are some specific tips for the brave of heart.

Never surf alone.
Go to a public beach and chat with a lifeguard about the conditions.
If you can’t find a guard, remember that waves come in “sets,” so study the ocean patiently for at least 15 minutes to be sure you’ve seen how big the sets are.
Remind yourself that waves are always bigger than they appear from the beach.
Think about currents—the invisible danger—and ask yourself how long you can paddle hard before burning out.
Finally, remember that it’s better to be on the beach wishing you were out in the waves than to be out in the waves wishing you were on the beach.

If all this sounds pretty serious, you’ll be glad to hear that Hawaii’s summer waves are much, much smaller. Summer season is a lark. The primary reason stems from a law of physics: waves break in their own depth of water. In other words, a two-foot wave breaks in approximately two feet of water.

This changes everything. It’s hard to drown in two feet of water. You’ll get tumbled when you fall and maybe get a little water up your nose, but you won’t get your skull crushed on a reef. After the tumble, you simply stand up and catch your breath instead of being held under what feels like Niagara Falls. And forget currents; you can walk to shore.

The season we’ll define as “summer” starts gradually in April and runs through September. Since the most consistent waves come from the south during that period, you’ll want to stay on the south side of either Oahu or Kauai. When we add in the requirement for surfing infrastructure, that boils down to Waikiki on Oahu or Poipu on Kauai.

Wait! Just two places? Four, counting winter? Your choice. You can stay anywhere in Hawaii and possibly get lucky. But if you want the best chance of the best waves, it’s smart to go where those waves break most consistently.

© HTJ

Don’t listen to surf snobs’ derisive comments about Waikiki. If you or your companion enjoys sophisticated shopping, dining and night life, and you want 100% certainty of learning to surf, Waikiki satisfies those objectives better than any other place on the planet.

Beyond the glitz of Waikiki’s hotels and its tourist-packed beach lies a different world: nearly a mile of world-famous surf breaks. This is the domain of the “beach boys,” who taught Jack London to surf generations ago and have been honing their special magic ever since.

You’ll find them along the beach between the Sheraton Hotel and the Duke Kahanamoku statue, not on the Internet. Just look for tall beginner boards, or ask a lifeguard. Any beach boy you pick will share surfing lore, help you deal with traffic in the busy, near-shore breaks, and have you standing and turning before you know it.

Or if you prefer tranquility to night life, head for Poipu, on the south side of Kauai, Hawaii’s “Garden Isle.” Accommodations range from inexpensive condos to the AAA Four Diamond Grand Hyatt, and local activities range from excellent diving to golf on a Robert Trent Jones championship course.

Poipu’s surf schools are listed in tourist guides and online, and most take reservations. While we’re reluctant to recommend one over another, we can’t help mentioning that Tracy rode her very first wave here under the guidance of 7-time World Surfing Champ Margo Oberg.

Which brings up the question: why take lessons? Here’s why. You can experience most sports simply by trying them. If you can whack a tennis ball across the net, you just started playing tennis. If you stand on your skis and slide a few feet, you just became a beginning skier. With surfing, however, you must accomplish a neat little trick before riding your first wave.

Specifically, you must “read” the incoming waves and pick one that’s going to peak just shoreward of where you’re waiting. Next, you must time your paddling so that you’re up to speed when the wave overtakes you. Next, you must hop up on the right spot on the board so that the nose of the board doesn’t dive into the water as the wave lifts the tail of the board. Finally, you have to keep your balance as the board accelerates.

It’s all or nothing—until you put all of that together, you just keep flopping into the water and you’ve yet to ride your first wave. Once you have, you’re over the hump; you have a sense of what it’s supposed to feel like, and you can then start practicing. Don’t be masochistic. Take a lesson.

But beware, surfing is addictive. Once you have experienced the thrill of riding a wave, you’ll want to come back again and again, looking for an even more perfect wave to ride.

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