Howzit North Shore! High Surf Advisories, High Surf Warnings, High Wind Warnings, Flash Flood Warnings, Marine Advisories, Snowstorms on the Big Island, Power Outtages, Polluted Waters from Excess Rain and Water Run-offs, Downed Telephone Poles and much more! Goodness Gracious, what a January!
We have also had quite a bit of Big Surf in the last month, which is really a plus considering the fact that the Fall Surf Season during the tail end of 2003 was extremely below par in the surf department. Here’s hoping that the rest of Winter Surf Season 2004 has some kicking surf right on into the late Spring!

As we went to deadline, there were high surf advisories posted for the weekend, and as we moved into the last week of January 2004…there were more Big Waves predicted for the whole week! Yeehah! Unfortunately for the Directors of the “Ezekiel Faith Riding Pro” at Sunset Beach, the 1st event on this year’s Hawaii Pro-Am Circuit…the waves have either been too big, too small or just plain junk at Sunset. At this writing, the contest has yet to move into Round 2… and they may have to go into overtime to finish up the Event. This has been the case with many of the surf events in this cataclysmic Winter Surf Season of 2003-2004. Although the waves have been good somewhere on the North Shore on any given particular day of most of the events…Mother Nature does not seem to want to cooperate at the exact site where the contest is on, and many contests have been postponed day after day. Even Randy Rarick had a bit of difficulty with getting the ocean to cooperate during the 2003 VANS Triple Crown of Surfing, but in the end… the level of pro surfing was of such an intense caliber that the boys were able to make ANY wave look good and the Triple Crown was a resounding success. 2003 Triple Crown and 2003 ASP World Champion Andy Irons made it such a clean sweep that his image seems to be popping up everywhere! On posters, on Oceanic RoadRunner commercials, on the back of Huge Beer Delivery Trucks, on TV’s Board Stories, on T-shirts and more! Go Hawaii! Go Andy Irons… can he do it again in 2004?

January saw some Huge Days of towsurfing at Jaws (Peahi) on Maui! Local Sunset Beach resident, Dan Moore, got a wave which may be a contender for the Big Wave Awards. He also took the wipe-out of a lifetime that day! Brazilian Sylvio Mancuso also snagged a Monster. Laird Hamilton might have got the Biggest Wave of all at Jaws, and to top that off he went LEFT on the thing! Hairy!

Then again, the California Crew may have outdone themselves on a recent Cortes Bank mission… to that Mysto Open Ocean Sea Mount situated perilously 100 miles off the coast of San Diego. Relative unkown towsurfer Greg Long got a Monster Right, and he tucked up and into the barrel and got spat out! How big was THAT wave? Go to towsurfer.com, watch the video… and draw your own conclusions. It was heavy!

Changes in Haleiwa! The old Kua Aina shop closed down as the sandwhich emporium move into its new and permanent digs along with Surf n Sail and the Tabora Gallery at the new building next to the Wyland Gallery in Haleiwa. The roadside space next to the Haleiwa Post Office which used to be half of Pizza Hut has re-opened as the Hawaiian Moon Gift Shop. The new buliding next to where Café Notte recently closed down, just up the hill from K-Bros service station… has filled up with “Water Goddess”, a Brazilian Bikini and clothing shop run by the lovely Katia. Next to that is the new “North Shore Wellness Retreat” with chiropractor Allen Tsutsui, LMT Vicky Hanby and Sylvia, a Reiki and Lomi Lomi Specialist.

Here ar some belated results from the last Event of 2003 in the “OP presents the HASA Surf Series” on Dec. 20th and 21st at Makaha. Menehune 1A/John Quizon… Menehune 2A/Matthew Costa… JrMen 2A/Parrish Byrne… Masters/Jaia Waits… Boys 2A/Kaito Matsuoka… Men 2A/Cisco Kay… Sr Men/Dexter Shimabukuro..
GrandMaster/Craig Sugihara… Open Men/Julian Wilson… Girls/Lani Hunter… BB Boys/MacKenzie Yoshida… BB Men/Jason Bartels..Women/Katherine Van Dyke… Women/Lian Chang Remular… DropKnee/
Ata Meyers… Menehune LngBrd/Kaleo Cajigal… Men LngBrd/Ned Snow… Sr Men LngBrd/Daniel Kauai… Girls LngBrd/Renee Watkins… Launch/Brandon Hilton… Jr Men LngBrd/Makamae DeSoto… Master LngBrd
/Wallace Akuna… Open LngBrd/Makamae DeSoto… Women LngBrd/Mimi Horiuchi.

On January 11th, 25 year old Australian Damian King won the “RockStar Games Pipeline Pro” in good 4-8 foot waves at Pipeline. He also clinched the World Championship with this victory. This event was the final stop of the 2003 World Super Tour for the International BodyBoarding Association (IBA). King won $4000.
Spencer Skipper of Hawaii took 2nd and $2000. Rui Ferreira of Portugal took 3rd and $1500 and Guilherme Tamega of Brazil got 4th and $1200. Coming up? The Pipeline BodySurfing Classic, the World Championships of Womens Bodyboarding at Pipeline, the Pipeline Energy Pro, the HASA Ehukai event and more. Along with hopefully a lot more good surf. See you out there! Aloha… Ace Cool!