March is here at last, the month spring arrives and South Shore surfers watch eagerly for swells in the aftermath of winter, our off-season for waves. We’ve said a hopeful goodbye to February’s heavy rainstorms, brown-water alerts and tradewind lulls that stifled us with vog.
I learned last month, however, that the Chinese solar calendar says spring arrived Feb. 4. This made intuitive sense, for I remembered the long-ago February my husband and I spent in a farmhouse on a tiny island off the northern coast of France, where violent tempests alternated with sunny days and then, all at once, small purple flowers pushed out of the bare earth. They were crocuses, also known as primavera, “the first flowers of spring,” our neighbor said.
To a couple from California and Hawaii living through our first rural winter, they were miraculous signs of hope.
For Hawaii surfers, the transition months of February and March are filled with hope: North Shore surfers are hoping winter’s big waves will linger and South Shore surfers are hoping spring swells will come early.
You know it’s still winter, though, when you hear the kolea’s loud, piercing cry. The small brown-and-white birds spend winters in the islands and summers in Alaska. We used to see flocks of them running up and down the sliver of sand at Makalei Beach, but not since it’s become a gathering place for dog owners who let their pets off the leash.
We still have our human snowbirds, though.
On a weekend morning in February, when an unpredicted bump of south swell gave us glassy little waves out at Suis, I had my first sighting in a year of Will Allison, a long-haired, full-mustached North Carolinian who winters in Honolulu. He and his wife, Karen, both longboard, but she prefers Threes, the deepwater break off Waikiki.
I asked Will if he was still shaping custom surfboards.
“Yeah. I’m a dinosaur,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Hell, now they just make those pop-outs (boards mass-produced with machine-shaped foam blanks). In the 1960s we used to kinda look down on ‘em, though they worked fine. The Royal Hawaiian, one was called.”
“I remember my first board, bought at the San Mateo (Calif.) Surf Shop, was a Royal Hawaiian,” reminisced Captain Cal from his seat on his shortboard, positioned deep in the lineup, behind where most waves peak.
“Yeah, I’ll keep shaping so long as I still got my clients,” Will said.
“You still at the newspaper?” he asked me.
“Yeah.”
“Haha!” he laughed, startling me. “Print journalism: You’re a dinosaur, too!”
THE OTHER morning as I drove to work, I passed Captain Cal heading for Kapiolani Park in his surf trunks and running shoes, his long white hair flowing loose to his shoulders.
“I’m gonna jog and practice my inner Zen,” he called out with a wave.
A sort of reverse snowbird, he’ll soon be flying to Colorado for his annual snowboarding trip.
The last weekend of February brought us classic, punishing Suis: a moderate south swell augmented by wraparound easterly wind waves, producing bumpy, chaotic conditions. It was wild, grueling and exhilarating, just like in the old days before the steady decline of tradewinds spoiled us with glassy waves.
On weekends when Suis is flat but the east shores get tradewind or wrap-around north swells, Don and I head for Makapuu to bodysurf. We discovered our mutual passion for this water sport — which is basically the art of falling — after falling in love at grad school in landlocked Iowa.
Sometimes at Makapuu we run into a young married couple, Jeremy and Noelle Shorenstein, who are about the age Don and I were when we lived in France. It’s sweet to see the next generation enjoying togetherness in the waves, and to find ourselves still falling, after all these years.
“In the Lineup” features Hawaii’s oceangoers and their regular hangouts, from the beach to the deep blue sea. Reach Mindy Pennybacker at mpennybacker@staradvertiser.com or call 529-4772
