The excitement that mounted and built after Monday’s green light announcement was quickly squashed Wednesday when the morning sun shone down on a fairly flat Waimea Bay. The Quiksilver In Memory of Eddie Aikau was called off as the promising
The excitement that mounted and built after Monday’s green light announcement was quickly squashed Wednesday when the morning sun shone down on a fairly flat Waimea Bay. The Quiksilver In Memory of Eddie Aikau was called off as the promising swell never quite made it to our collectively desired destination.
Reef McIntosh said it was fairly obvious early on that it wasn’t in the cards.
“It’s not rocket science,” he said Thursday. “You could tell it was small, so everyone kind of knew that it wasn’t going to go.”
One of the 28 participants, McIntosh was down there with his game face on, having trusted the hype he was hearing from all the right people. But while his disappointment was different than ours as spectators, there’s always the sense that the contest shouldn’t go unless everything breaks just right.
“You want it to happen, but you want it to happen with the right conditions,” he said. “You don’t want to have it if it’s small. No half days, no expression sessions, none of that. It’s a special event and it takes a special kind of day. I’m totally fine not having it if it’s not to the criteria. It has to be legit, because Eddie was legit.”
To put together such an event requires a lot of logistical maneuvering and everyone plays a part. The organizers and the participants need one another, but it can be difficult for those not already situated in Hawaii.
“Jeremy Flores (was) staying at the Quiksilver house with me,” McIntosh said. “He flew in from France and got in Tuesday night. He wasn’t planning on coming but if Eddie calls, he answers. So he answered and he (left last night) to fly back to France, so he did the best he could do.”
Grant “Twiggy” Baker flew in from Capetown, South Africa and McIntosh said. Tom Carroll had just flown from Oahu back to Australia last week. So he was only home a few days before returning after the green light flashed on Monday.
“I feel bad for those people that had to travel far,” he said. “But that’s part of the deal.”
As a Kauai surfing product, McIntosh remains on Oahu’s North Shore for the majority of the winter, but he does like to sneak back here just outside of the peak winter months.
“I love those early-season swells because they’re so fresh,” he said. “The first couple of west swells are so fresh and buttery. Then those last couple in late April — if I’m there and one comes, those are always so refined.”
His Haena house gives him a chance to cruise over if the circumstances work out, but as a family man, everything needs to be planned accordingly.
Scanning the list of competitors for The Eddie, only men received an invitation — a fact that didn’t even occur to me until someone else brought it to my attention. There has been a little momentum recently regarding women in big-wave events, with Kauai’s Keala Kennelly consistently making a name for herself at spots like Teahupoo and Maui’s Paige Alms finding the barrel at Jaws. It seems like a woman being invited to The Eddie isn’t so much a matter of if, but when.
“It could be refreshing,” McIntosh said about a woman in the field. “It will probably happen in the near future. There’s going to be a girl in the Jaws event and a girl at the Mavericks event one of these days, sooner or later. It’ll be a game changer.”
That won’t be the case in The Eddie this year and with only about two weeks remaining in the waiting period, it’s looking more and more like we’re headed for six straight no-go years. There was some chatter Wednesday of another swell approaching next week, but McIntosh isn’t exactly buying it.
“There’s always talk,” he laughed. “That’s the problem with the world these days. I don’t see it.”
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David Simon can be reached at dsimon@thegardenisland.com.
