There’s a reason “the Eddie” doesn’t run every year.
If it was really an annual happening, the singularness of this community gathering — festival, if you will — would suffer.
It would be just another contest among the many. It’s a rare thing these days for an actual happening to rise above the hype. What happened Thursday at Waimea Bay was a far greater cultural display than anyone could ever have imagined and outdistanced any of the preceding fanfare by … well, at least the size of one of those 60-foot moving mountains being pushed in by Mother Nature to create a chaotic, yet somehow controlled, and exhilarating platform for the surf purebloods otherwise known as big-wave chargers and hunters.
It brought an estimated 25,000 spectators, according to the World Surf League, many who also showed up on Feb. 10 in the wee hours of the morning from all across the island only to hear that the swell hadn’t arrived.
No audible grumbling could be heard that day from those who woke up at 3 a.m. to beat the traffic or slept in tents by the side of the road. They knew it was a delicate balancing act. For the Eddie, you need the 40-foot wave faces — or you go home. That’s the way it is.
So, those same spectators came in droves on Thursday to the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau big-wave invitational with full knowledge that it might not happen again. It didn’t stop them, and they were rewarded for their perseverance.
For those who missed it on the worldwide TV broadcast or anyone who attended but wants to see it again, there will be lasting video images of those performers taking off down the slippery slopes of the biggest waves Waimea Bay can hold, the best day Clyde Aikau — Eddie’s brother and a competitor on Thursday at age 66 — can remember in his 40 years of surfing the place.
Oh boy, did the Eddie ever go this time.
Whether it was the enormous wipeouts or the hold-your-breath elevator drops or the tons of whitewater suds that the surfers nimbly outraced, fans were treated to a spectacle that will keep the legend of Eddie Aikau going. If the 25,000 estimate is correct, that’s a 150 percent increase from the last time it was held in 2009. And you can bet that those who didn’t make the trek this time might decide to Eddie up and go next time.
Hawaii’s Dave Wassel, who placed seventh, was at the top looking down one monster offering while 11-time world champion Kelly Slater was paddling up the face nearby. Afterward, Wassel said he was elated to just make it back to the beach.
“Nobody manned up today, we just survived,” he said before describing what it was like out there: “It’s so much more than just a surf contest. Surfing this for the first time means that everything I’ve done in the last 40 years has finally come to fruition. I looked over the edge on 10 different waves that were absolutely unrideable. Kelly Slater, the 11-time world champion or whoever he is … I looked down one and pulled back and Kelly says, ‘I’m so glad you didn’t go for that wave.’ That in my mind was like I was looking down a five-story building and there was no stairwell, there was no guardrail. It was just pure suicide and I’m glad I didn’t go.’”
Slater, maybe the most popular and definitely the most successful surfer of all-time — and a former Eddie champion, placed fifth.
As a bonus for fans, the crowd favorite, Haleiwa’s John John Florence was the winner and summed up what this ninth running in the 31 years of the Eddie delivered to him: “This is definitely the best thing that has ever happened to me in my surfing life.”
Those in the surf community have always wanted us to know what Eddie Aikau — the waterman who died at age 31 in 1978 while trying to swim to get help for others when the voyaging canoe Hokule‘a capsized on a cultural trip from Oahu to Tahiti — meant to others, to surfing, to the Hawaiian culture. They’ve always succeeded at this. Eddie’s real story is legendary and the surf contest that bears his name proved more than ever on Thursday that it’s a not only a worthy tribute but also an immense showcase for Hawaii citizens and the Hawaiian people.
