Electric Blue Maybes - The Surfers Journal

You can tell when you’ve arrived on the Westside of Oahu by following the clues people affix to their cars. Reflecting the Leeward Coast’s drier, sunbaked terrain, and its rough roadside liquor stores, the bumper stickers mirror the sentiments—which get wilder and rawer the deeper one ventures up Farrington Highway. Before Nanakuli, the messages are benign: “Have you hugged your keiki today?” or “Got Poi?” or even “Will Work for Dolly Parton Tickets.” But passing the power plant, heading out toward Waianae, the mottos turn more militant: “My dog ate your Honor Student” or “Watchufaka!” or “No Hawaiians, No Aloha.” (A factual statement, by the way.)

“Before this trip to the Westside, we checked Waimea in the morning but the swell didn’t seem like it had arrived yet,” says Torrey Meister [pictured]. “Billy Kemper, Eli Olson, and I just started driving. I had never surfed this wave before. The swell was starting to fill in, on the verge of maxing out. I saw this wave doubling up and swinging wide, so I put my head down and paddled as hard as I could. I almost fell on the drop because there was a crazy ridge up the face.”

When it’s firing on the Westside, sometimes half the battle is finding a way in and out when accessing the “maybe-waves.” Billy Kemper does the razor-lava rock dance.

Meanwhile, getting out of the water is undoubtedly the furthest thing from Eli Olson’s mind.

Regardless, a Westside mission remains a perennial fieldtrip for Oahu surfers and visitors opting for an adventure when the North Shore gets maxed-out and the trade winds are whipping. Your guarantee to score out there is always, at best, speculative. Indeed, some will tell you there are dozens of Leeward breaks that light up each winter, while others will allege that you’ll schlep out to find precisely two: Makaha and Maili Point.

But, that’s the Westside. You don’t just show up to find Mother Nature rolling out the red carpet. You chance it. You’re aware that if you can’t see your car, that’s on you. You pray that the one local you’ve heard about doesn’t show up and send your poor ass in. You pull over often and stare at various electric blue maybes, spitting onto dry reef. You search a coastline that feels quite removed from the other three and mumble to your co-pilot, while gazing through the windshield.

The Westside is a no-fly-zone for the thin of skin, as evidenced by these vignettes from Oahu correspondent [and intro author] Beau Flemister: “Once, arriving at a particularly renowned but protected right-hander,” he recalls, “I was barred from even parking by a local gentleman who shook his head at me like, ‘Don’t even think about it, son.’ Another time, pumping down a rare set wave I managed to catch at Makaha, I was humiliated by a well-known local who shouted, for all to hear, from the shoulder: ‘Do something!’” Unidentified making the most of his Westside moment.

“The night before this session,” says Meister, “Billy Kemper and I were on our way to Jaws. We were almost to the Honolulu airport when we called the buoys and checked a couple other reports, and found that strong winds arrived there early. We pulled the plug on the whole thing. Obviously, we made the right call.”

“Is that a real wave?” you ask.

“Think you can surf that…”

Judging from these photographs, some clearly can.

In all of my own visits to that uncompromisingly authentic coastline, the overall local attitude of “we’ve seen it all—including you” was best summed up on the back of an old Toyota Corolla hatchback. We were passing Makakilo when a tough-looking woman sporting a braided mohawk changed lanes in front of us. Beside her, sitting shotgun, was an actual pit bull wearing sunglasses. The sticker on the bumper read, “If You’re Gonna Ride My Ass, At Least Pull My Hair.”

I’m almost positive we scored that day.

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