With each sandy step across the beach at Kalapaki Bay, my heart answers with a faster beat. Looking out toward the steady break, I can hardly imagine that in the next hour I will be cast out to those untamed
With each sandy step across the beach at Kalapaki Bay, my heart answers with a faster beat. Looking out toward the steady break, I can hardly imagine that in the next hour I will be cast out to those untamed waves, on a board of my own, negotiating timing and balance, with absolutely no previous surfing experience.
Assigned by my enthusiastic editor, an avid long-boarder who has forgotten the courage required to take on the sport anew, I head up to True Blue’s wooden counter to face my fate, take a surf lesson and live to write about it for the front page.
I am given an aloha welcome by co-owner Greg Davis, and asked to sign the waiver, stash my bag, and wear an oversized rashy — to protect my bikini-bare skin from the traction-rough blue beginner’s board.
Popping out from the back, with a smile and handshake, Taylor Savage, my surf instructor, introduces himself. His jovial spirit immediately puts me at ease, as does his admission that he has had great success getting first-timers up and riding in one session. Before heading out to the Monster Blue, waiting patiently to swallow me up, Taylor takes me upstairs to Duke’s “Surf Museum.”
Admittedly ignorant of surf history, I perk up when Taylor explains surfing was once reserved for Hawai‘i’s royalty. Suddenly my posture changes, and I feel a bit more noble and less timid.
Taylor’s short but informative presentation that covers the first boards made from strong but outrageously heavy wood to the birth of modern surfing with Duke Kahanamoku’s legendary rides in Waikiki, help to further ease my nerves and put my adventure in a historical context.
Excited to get out on the water and on my board, Taylor explains we’ll be learning the basics on land.
Lying down on the blue board, much longer than my 5-foot 4-inch frame, I place my hands just under my shoulders and pop up. I stretch my arms out and imagine the wind and water spraying my face.
Flashbacks to the ultimate surf film for non-surfers, “Point Break,” comes flooding back — “Get up or you’ll be fish food,” screams Lori Petty to novice Keanu Reeves in the movie. Taylor reminds me to stay low, knees bent, head up, “you’ll feel like you want to straighten your knees — don’t,” he laughs.
After practicing the pop up a few more times, Taylor brings me down to the water’s edge. Pointing to the horizon, he explains how we’ll paddle out in “the channel” and after each ride, I’ll have to go around the breaking waves to get back out.
“Where will you be?” I ask, a bit concerned. “Oh, around,” he says. “But you’ll see, I’m going to do all the work. You’ll have your own personal tow-in today.”
Taylor shows me how to drag my board under my arm and launch off the shore. The water is warm and it feels good to finally be heading out. Laying on my tummy, paddling with my arms, Taylor forges ahead and grabs my board with his toes.
Like an engine and caboose, we get right out through the channel, waves crashing to my right and relaxed surfers gliding like swans along the surface.
“Now we wait,” Taylor says, his board floats next to mine with his eyes steady on the horizon. I see the Happy Camper — photographer Dennis Fujimoto — on the edge of the jetty, fixing his focus on my position.
“Wow, you get your own personal photographer on your first ride. I’m jealous,” says Taylor. “Yeah,” I answer, “unless I make a complete fool of my —” before I can finish Taylor has started splashing and pushing me in a frantic pace, “paddle, paddle, harder, faster, go —” my calm and genial surf instructor suddenly becomes an intense drill sergeant, and I move as fast as my arms can propel me.
“NOW!” His voice trails off behind me as I feel the weight of the wave begin to accelerate under my belly. Not sure how it happened, but suddenly I am standing steadily on the board, the tip seemingly flying over the water’s glassy surface, and the sound of a ferocious churning chasing me into the shore.
It felt much more solid and secure than I had anticipated … the blue boat-of-a-beginner’s-board had something to do with that, no doubt.
“You did it!” Taylor’s voice screams across the bay.
I did? It all happened so quickly. What a feeling — comparisons fall short for the smooth force of nature’s sway that somehow lifted me above this heavy water and let me sail along it’s shimmering face.
Elated, I paddle around to the channel and make my way back to Taylor. “Amazing, isn’t it?” He must have read my starry-eyed expression. “Only a surfer knows the feeling.”
Taylor’s smile and encouragement for my small accomplishment demonstrates his love for teaching: “I never get tired of taking people out, and sharing this with them. It’s a wonderful life.”
Taylor grew up surfing in Southern California but dreaming of warmer waters moved to Kaua‘i several years ago to surf every day. Recently he convinced his mother to do the same.
“I just love it here. I mean, the water is just unbelievable. Every single day is a gift. It’s just so beautiful, where else would you want to be? Okay … here we go — PADDLE!”
And once again, the hurry-up-and-wait tempo of surfing takes me by surprise, and I find myself paddling, jumping up, and smiling all the way in. With my first wave behind me, I’ve got an ocean of waves ahead of me — to be known, one by one. This is just the beginning, I’m hooked.
• Keya Keita, lifestyle writer, can be reached at 245-3681 ext.257 or kkeita@kauaipubco.com.
