Often these comparisons are pointed to Hawaii and rightfully so.
‘The beach break today was so round the lefts were like Pipeline.
‘Bra you were so deep it looked like Off The Wall.’
‘Did you check how it peaked on the outside? That section looked just like Waimea.’
‘Fuck bra that giant set went so wide, it was heading out to sea before it turned around, pointed itself at me, broke on my head and fucked me up properly, just like a west set at Sunset.”
It is rare that waves in Hawaii are compared to other waves in the world. When winter comes to the North Shore no one is really comparing apples to apples anymore and the surfing universe takes second stage to the greatest show on earth.
Except for maybe one wave.
When you come from the airport heading for the sounds of Pipe you first pass through all the pineapple fields. You do. It’s real.
Then you get Haleiwa, which is great, and an awesome start to the sojourn. Thing is, when you go to the North Shore you want to see Waimea, possibly get a glimpse of Outer Alligators where Todd Chesser died Kirk Passmore died. So you keep on heading east, along the Kam Highway.
After about 2 kms past Haleiwa the road opens up and gives you a glimpse of the sea. If you happen to be there on a north swell, in the 8-foot region or bigger, you will see a sight that you will never ever be able to unsee. The only legit point break on the north shore, Laniakea, or Lani’s, and it’ll be going off!
It’s long, it’s heavy, it gets shallow and it spits thick tubes on that previously mentioned north swell, and when all the sections link up it is a large and heavy version of Supertubes, Jeffreys Bay. In fact, it is actually the closes wave I have ever seen to JBay. Some people mention Lobos on the Canary Islands, others mention Lennox, and others even talk about Rincon, but when t comes to a Supers replica doing her thing, it is Laniakea on the North Shore on a good ole north swell.
When we arrived it was doing just that. Honking. Eight-foot sets, but nowhere near as death as Pipe or OTW. We decided to hit it, even though we were Just Of The Jet.
I took my 7’2, shaped back home by a dude who had never been to Hawaii, and paddled out with my medium sense of fitness and medium feeling of bravado. My courage was somewhere between chicken-shit cowardly and Shane Dorian.
We both got to the back without too much drama, going wide, paddling against the rip, but with longer boards and more foam the paddle seemed fine. We were the first out, filled with jetlag and not knowing when to sleep and when to be awake.
My mate and I got to the outside take off spot, ready to catch our first screamer set wave at Laniakea. While we were getting into position we saw a dozen or so Hawaiian looking surfers grabbing their boards of their car roofs and heading for the water.
We missed the first set. It broke outside and we just scrambled under heaving lips. It was bigger than what we though, but we were still stoked on the excitement of big Laniakea as our first surf on the North Shore. We missed a second set, and in dismay we could see a literal flotilla of surfers heading for us. It was after all cooking surf.
Finally my mate caught a wave and headed off towards Haleiwa at a hundred miles an hour, flat lining a utility speed stance to outrun his first beast. The second one was mine, and as I paddle for it this Hawaiian dude said to me, 'this one yours brudda don't fall.'
I took off, got to the bottom of this big, warping beast, and my boards stopped. It was like I had ridden into something. As I stood there hopelessly, trying to bounce some speed out of the 7’2, the wave broke on me.
You know that saying 'when the wave breaks here, don't be there.'
Well I was there, and I kind of knew that my eggs were headed fo dat big omelet in da sky.
Two over-the-falls cycles and I was on the beach, gasping for breath, after a long time underwater. My 7’2 was unscathed and lying next to me.
You can make whatever comparisons you want, under any conditions and swell directions you fancy – the North Shore is not JBay, it’s the North Shore.
