iStockphoto / Travis Johnson / Billy McDonald
For a million and one reasons, canoe surfing is not easy. It requires a team of paddlers in a wobbly boat to all work together in perfect unison all while at the whims of an ever-changing and breaking wave.
Canoe surfing tiny waves is a challenge but charging waves that are 3x overhead at Waimea Bay on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, one of the biggest and most famous surf breaks on earth, filled with other surfers, is as challenging as it gets. But these fellas pulled it off.
Canoe Surfing Triple Overhead Waves At Waimea Bay Shouldn’t Be Possible But They Did It
The gentlemen behind the YouTube channel Ocean Paddler TV uploaded a video this week featuring watermen Iaika Kalama, Mikey Redd, Sumera-Lee, Kahula-Davis, Na’i Mane and Mark Healey all together in the outrigger canoe charging waves so big mot surfers would be afraid to paddle out. They essentially put their trust in each other and charged it.
This swell is from a few months ago when Waimea Bay was absolutely going off. What possessed them to paddle out in a canoe to surf instead of on boards? Who knows. But the footage is epic:
Mark Healey described this type of extreme canoeing as saying “with all that weight in the canoe and honestly, there’s very little drag, there’s no fins like a surfboard except (going) in and out with the blade (oar). It just goes so fast. And you’re catching that momentum of the wave while it’s still (building) but it’s a double-edged sword because if you’ve got that momentum and you don’t want that momentum anymore and want to try and kick out of the wave there’s that uneasy feeling of like ‘are we gonna be able to turn this thing?’”
Healey says when he’s out there canoe surfing he’s “I’m the dumb labor on the canoe I’m just paddling. I’m taking orders. It’s just a lot of faith in your steersman, really.”
And that right there illustrates how this is night and day from regular surfing. It is somehow closer to the sport of Rowing than Surfing, because it isn’t every surfer for himself it is a team working together in unison to paddle and charge waves then bail out at the perfect time all with someone directing their every decision.