Capturing the Moment

Wave of the day at Dumps, Maui Left at Lahaina Breakwall Right at Freight Trains The waves keep coming! We finally got a big south swell here in Maui and surfers are loving it! It does make taking people snorkeling and driving boats difficult but I love the summer surfing here. You always hear about the north shore and winter surf but few people know that Hawaii's summer swells can bring in pretty big waves from the south. I have been surfing along the south and west shores which have been getting pounded by large surf over the last four days. In fact three boats moored near Mala pier broke free in a really large set and crashed up on the beach. The waves destroyed the boats quickly after. Luckily all of our boats have been doing fine and we have even been running trips. Molokini is still clear and we found a couple spots around Lanai that havn't been murked up too badly. I am so glad that we got a good early season south swell this year since last summer was so s...

  On a hunch I booked it down to Dumps yesterday after work just in case there were waves big enough to surf. Dumps is a beautiful wave with turquoise water that forms a steep left of shallow reef. It works on big south swells sent up from storms in the southern hemisphere so it is mainly a summer time wave. During the winter everyone flocks to the north shore to catch big waves sent down from big storms up near Japan and Alaska.   You can imagine my exuberance as I walked around the last corner of the path to Dumps just in time to see a set of three perfectly formed, head high lefts peeling into Dumps....and one guy out! I literally ran the rest of the way over the lava rocks to get to the entry before jumping in the water and furiously paddling out to the lineup. I couldn't believe my luck. The other surfer did say that was the biggest set he had seen yet, but luckily I was in for a lot of luck during this early south swell surf session!  Making friends in the lin...

It has been a slow summer. So it has been until now that I have gotten out into some surf with my buddy's GoPro camera. It mounts on the front of the surfboard and has a super wide angle lens to capture a much larger area even at close range. Having the camera on the board also give you some idea of how big the wave is, although it can be misleading if I am the top of a wave vs at the bottom. The south swell was wrapping into the bay perfectly this morning. The wind was non-existent. And there were only a few other surfers out. A perfect combination.   The tide was low so I had to watch out for shallow coral when the waves would close out on me. I think I stayed in the waves a little longer than I normally would if I didn't have the camera attached. But if you don't have a pro photographer following you to each session the Go Pro can be a great addition. It also lets me critique my surfing style from an angle I have never seen before.

 The summer swells are finally here. The same swell that lit up Cloudbreak thousands of miles away reached our shores here in Maui last week. The west side lit up with overhead glassy surf while the south side remained a bit shadowed. Occaisionally a big set would slip through the shadow zone and rumble into a few select south shore breaks so this is where Ben, Heidi, and I headed to avoid the masses. Ben and I had surf boards all waxed up and ready to ride, while Heidi had her favorite long zoom lens outfitted on her DSLR camera ready to catch the action. Sometimes being a surf photographer can be a lot of waiting but luckily Ben and I kept the action coming for her by catching lots of waves.   It was a fun day with lots of head high sets coming in. Not too many people were out. Ben definitely got the wipeout of the day with his casting the board aside nose first entry down the face of a set wave.