Always an adventure…

Things don’t always go as you plan… but as long as you just keep paddling, you’ll be fine….

This past Monday we were under a Severe Weather Alert for high winds. They were forecasting 25 to 30mph with stronger gusts…so of course, we packed up our boards and headed up North for a downwind run. When we got to the beach, it took two people to carry the boards and as we made our way to the water we could feel the sand blowing up off the beach and pelting us… always a nice welcome.

We planned on paddling south 10 miles and getting out at a rather sketchy location (think sharp rocks, sea urchins, surge..see photo!) which I had never exited at before. So off we went – backs to the howling trade winds and swell, surfing the bumps, headed south along the Kona coast. It wasn’t the ideal run for standup paddling because we had to constantly adjust our course and couldn’t just surf in the direction the wind-swell was breaking but it was still fun and we were making good time.

A few miles down the coast we had to paddle way outside to avoid the occasional monster set that appeared on the horizon, which put us at risk of ending up too far outside and finding ourselves with a one way ticket to Tahiti. What happened next occurred in very slow motion, or at least it seemed that way at the time. And to those of you who think that it would have been “cool” or “fun” or any of those happy adjectives, let me tell you, it wasn’t exactly any of those. I happened to be looking at the shoreline when all of a sudden, only a couple hundred feet away, this giant whale head broke through the surface (like a torpedo – for those of you who need a visual reference) and shot straight into the air, body fully out of the water, back slightly arched to one side and landed with a splash. I’m assuming the splash was big, but by that point I wasn’t looking anymore.. I was headed like a bat out of hell in the opposite direction.

Now, let me explain. In any other situation I might not have been so concerned about a whale breaching so close to me.. but keep in mind, the conditions were crazy, the wind was loud, water was moving all over the place, waves were breaking and I couldn’t help but think that maybe the whales couldn’t tell we were up there. And I really didn’t want any whales to land on me.

After my whale encounter we continued on. As we neared our pickup spot the wind started to back off and it was getting harder to catch the bumps. I could see the rocky point that we need to paddle around and knowing that we were so close helped motivate me to move faster. I was happy to finally start paddling around the point until I realized we were starting to paddle into a headwind. At this point, I just wanted to get out of the water. Things only got worse when we realized that we wouldn’t be able to get out where we had originally planned because of the high surf. It would have been risking either ourselves or our equipment and I wasn’t about to damage my brand new board! We continued to paddle down the coast until and hour later we got to a spot where we were able to climb out onto the rocks by timing the surge and with the help of a very good friend (thank you Odie!).

For those of you who may be wondering why we didn’t just get out sooner, we didn’t have that option. The Big Island is known more for its jagged, lava coastline than sandy beaches and when you’re dealing with swell, wind swell, sea urchins, sharp rocks and 17 ft boards – there isn’t always an easy way out. Trust me, I was looking.

Despite it not being what I had expected, we did make it, it was fun and it was great training!
Next time though, I am going on a different run!

Jenny