North Shore / 24 Hours
From a terrifying, lightning-lit drive through a massive coastal storm to a magical morning at the Turtle Bay resort, this 24-hour journey captures the extremes of Hawaii. But the true test of survival comes as the sun sets over Laie Bay, turning a serene windsurfing session into a pitch-black nightmare on razor-sharp reefs—culminating in an unbelievable rescue and a dinner we would never forget.
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CHAPTER I
“If you can tell us three things that can be found on the new Pizza Bob, please call us. The first caller will receive a fifty-dollar coupon for free food and drinks at Pizza Bob!”
“Thiiis is… Keej Kju… M Kju, the… best Mix Music Station of the Island!!”
That day, the cool voice of a male entertainer blared from the speakers of our rented, bright red Corvette Stingray, repeatedly interrupting the music with this latest promotional spot, advertising the restaurant we were currently sitting in.
Oahu Island… Hawaii… North Shore… Haleiwa… February 1991…
It’s easy to find if you’re coming from the south of the island. You simply drive along one of the most beautiful coastal roads in the world. That’s Route 83 on the east side of the island of Oahu, Hawaii. Along the way, you drive through many small towns, often grinning at their funny names: Hawaii Kai, Hanauma Bay, Waimanalo, Kailua, Kaneohe, Kaaawa, Laie, Kahuku, Turtle Bay, Sunset Beach, Banzai Pipeline, until you finally reach Haleiwa. If you drive into Haleiwa from the east, after passing over a rather small and narrow bridge, the first thing you see on the right is a building housing two dining options. The first restaurant facing the street is an Asian place. The second half of the building is in the back; that’s where we were sitting this evening, at Pizza Bob.
If you want to reach Haleiwa from Honolulu, you take the H1 West. After passing the airport, to avoid getting lost, you should get into the right lane early enough so you don’t miss the exit for the H2 North. If you miss that exit, you’ll quickly find yourself continuing west on the H1. Once on the H2, you’ll see two giant, 44-story towers of Pearl City on the right. After those two Pearl City skyscrapers and about a 15-minute drive, you exit the H2 and take Route 80 through Wahiawa. It’s a small town in the center of the island. Leaving this town, 15 minutes later you’re on Highway 99. From here, the road leads to the Dole Plantations. When you reach the Dole Plantations from Wahiawa, there’s a Dole building on the right side of the road with a large parking lot where tourists hang out. They buy drinks, and ice cream, and can see all kinds of Hawaiian fruits behind the building. It’s like a small museum.
When you drive out of the parking lot and turn right, you continue on a two-lane road with oncoming traffic. After about a five-minute drive, the road slopes slightly downhill. From here, you have a beautiful view all the way to the North Shore, with the blue ocean visible in the background. Far off to the left, behind the plantations, is the Kaanapali coast. A massive mountain range stretches along there, making the lush green view against the blue sky truly fascinating.
While a lush green mountain range stretches out in the distance to the left, behind the Dole Plantations along the west coast, blocking the view of the ocean, a flat green landscape stretches out to the right, perfectly suited for plantations. While driving down toward the North Coast, besides the pineapple plantations, you can also see a sugar plantation halfway between Dole and the North Shore. One day, while driving up from the south, we noticed some trees in the distance on our right. We were curious. When we stopped, we discovered it was a coffee plantation. For us Europeans, it was a huge sensation to see coffee beans hanging on trees with our own eyes and to touch them with our fingers.
This drive from Dole takes about twenty minutes until you reach Route 83, which heads east. Most roads in Hawaii have names, just like Route 83 is Kamehameha Highway. Five minutes later, you reach Haleiwa. To prevent all the cars from driving straight through the town like they did in the nineties, a new bypass road was later built outside of Haleiwa on the right side. Drivers who want to go into Haleiwa must take the exit and turn left into the town. This small plantation and fishing village still retains the sleepy, rustic charm of the past.
At the center of the surfer and beach boy scene, the village features small galleries, gift shops, boutiques, and, of course, restaurants that fit the scene just as perfectly as the health food stores, yoga centers, karate dojos, and other exotic disciplines.
If you visit Haleiwa, you should do so in the late afternoon. Here, you can likely experience one of the most beautiful sunsets in Hawaii. During the day, you mostly see tourists in the restaurants on their island tours. Exhausted from the heat and the drive from Honolulu, they stop here to refresh themselves with cold drinks offered in the refrigerated cases or restaurants.
Pizza Bob, where we had been sitting right by the window by candlelight for a while due to a power outage, is easy to find. When you walk down from the street, you step onto a boardwalk right next to the building, which is constructed of gray wooden planks. First, you walk past the Asian restaurant. After passing the Asian place, which occupies the front half of the building, you can look to the right through the large glass windows into Pizza Bob to see at a glance whether there are free tables or if a long wait is to be expected.
To reach the entrance door, you have to walk all the way to the end of this large building along the gray wooden boardwalk. When you walk around the right side of the building, still on the boardwalk, there are also large windows on the right. The dense, wild green vegetation here on the north side blocks the view of the ocean; you can only hear the loud roar of the waves crashing onto the rocks not far away. The entrance is situated in the middle of the building. Not a bad setup. If there were lines during the day, guests at least stood in the shade on the north side, under the palm trees next to the large windows.
Upon entering the restaurant, you stand directly in front of the bar, which also houses the cash register. To the left along the wall is a row of two tables, behind which is the hallway leading to the restrooms. Likely due to the plumbing, a partition wall separates the restrooms and the kitchen, just like at our home in Berlin. The waitresses used this aisle between the two tables and the bar to fetch food from the kitchen.
If you enter the restaurant and turn right, you walk past three tables set up along the window. Opposite them is a wooden partition topped with several flower vases on a pedestal. Behind this partition and the vases is another pedestal with flower vases and three more tables situated slightly higher up. Up to eight people can sit at each of these tables. It would be more comfortable with six, but when locals want to sit together, we’ve often seen eight guests crowded around a table. At the end of the restaurant on the west side is the large window you walk past when approaching the restaurant from the street along the gray boardwalk. A row of smaller tables lines this large window. These are suitable for two guests, and when looking out, they face a small parking lot and a mom-and-pop store located behind it. All of this is surrounded by palm trees.
Up on the ceiling here at Pizza Bob, TV monitors are mounted in every corner, so from noon until ten at night, you can watch the most beautiful surfing rides in Hawaii accompanied by today’s hottest music.
The waitresses and temp workers here, where we had been sitting by candlelight for at least half an hour due to the power outage, are young, pretty teenagers. Mischko and I were seated in the row of smaller tables, from which, in the darkness at this hour, you could only occasionally catch the glowing headlights of a passing vehicle.
When the lights were still on, we could see every customer across the street walking in and out of the supermarket.
On our table, next to spaghetti, pizza, iced tea, and Coca-Cola, exotic flowers in a vase right under our noses gave off a sweet scent. This evening, too, the tourists had long since found their way back to Honolulu. The two of us were the only outsiders among the locals from Waialua, Kahuku, Laie, Sunset Beach, and Haleiwa. Since we had been on the island for almost twenty days, both sporty and as deeply tanned as the locals, I imagined we didn’t stand out as tourists.
I definitely couldn’t say a word, though, because at that point, the only English I knew was “I love you.” As always, Mischko handled the ordering. This boosted her confidence in her school English, making her more relaxed day by day. Besides, all the waitresses here knew us by now. Almost every evening it was, “Same procedure as every day. The same food as every day.”
Over in Kawela Bay at our hotel, the Turtle Bay Hilton, where we had been sleeping for the past twenty days—about a twenty-minute drive from here—seafood was the main offering in their restaurant. The hotel and its golf courses were populated 98% by Asians. Mischko and I weren’t seafood lovers, which was actually a shame. During our first few days at the hotel, we kept ordering the same thing. Over and over it was steak salad, steak salad. The same thing every night, costing $50, and that was without a tip.
Eating the same thing over and over for that much money? No, we thought, that really wasn’t necessary. That was one reason we drove around the area, eventually discovering this pleasant atmosphere. We felt comfortable here; everything was much more relaxed compared to the hotel. While everything at the hotel was stiff and quiet, with soft Hawaiian music playing in the background, here we heard loud laughter from all sides every evening, and the music blared in our ears like a disco. We marveled at the sickest wave rides by the beach boys on the TVs. As we sat there, we daydreamed about how beautiful it would be to escape our big city and settle down here.
These laid-back beach boys and beach girls talked to almost everyone. When they came into the restaurant, they’d sit at their table first. After a while, if they happened to spot their friends on the other side of the restaurant, they’d call out loudly and yell across the room. While they yelled and chatted across the space, the other guests would watch, laugh, and amuse themselves at their laid-back attitude and funny comments. The loudest yelling usually happened when someone was expected; when that person walked into the restaurant, chaos ensued. At that moment, everyone looked toward the new arrival. Even the young teenage waitresses carrying food or drinks and the pizza bakers would laugh along.
The locals joked loudly, laughed, and when leaving the restaurant, waved to each other with a “Hang Loose,” the traditional Aloha greeting of Hawaii.
Outside, the evening was unpleasant. Even at midday, the first black clouds had been spotted in the sky. They barely grazed the peaks of the hills not far from Backyards at Sunset Beach.
The wind picked up, bringing even thicker clouds that, throughout the day, had flattened out against the mountains, completely hiding their peaks for most of the afternoon. Around six o’clock, it started to rain, and it hadn’t stopped since. For three hours, drops had been splattering against the windows right before our eyes. Just a few meters from our window, hidden in the darkness, the massive palm fronds rustled so loudly with every strong gust of wind that we could hear them clearly inside.
This is pure Hawaii. The rainy season starts here at the beginning of December and lasts until the end of March. In the darkness not far from this restaurant, the biggest pipelines in the world were thundering.
Suddenly, cheers erupted from every mouth.
The power was back on. Even though the candlelight had been romantic, we were all relieved at that moment in the dark night. Now that we were almost finished eating, paying the bill would be much easier, though we had already braced ourselves to pay by candlelight.
We had the leftovers we couldn’t finish packed up in a doggy bag. Ten minutes after the lights came back on, we paid, left an appropriate tip on the table, and walked out of the restaurant. As soon as we opened the doors, the damp ocean west wind blew thick raindrops right into our faces.
Walking from east to west along the first half of the restaurant, straight into the wind, we had to hurry to avoid getting completely soaked. We ran along the boardwalk around the left side of the building, beneath the furious rustling of the palm fronds to our right. After passing the Asian restaurant and reaching the street, we had to run through the large puddles that had formed on the road until we reached the dark parking lot just across the street.
Right then, the parking lot in front of us was incredibly dark and spooky.
It belonged to the only supermarket in Haleiwa. That evening, as the rain poured down with full force onto our half-naked bodies, the lighting in the parking lot had completely failed. In the background, the only light burning was inside the currently closed supermarket. That little bit of indoor light helped us find our car in the total darkness. There were only three cars in the empty parking lot; one of them was ours—the red Corvette Stingray. Once inside the car, Mischko immediately locked the doors with the button, just to avoid any unpleasant surprises in the darkness. Grinning loudly, soaked as we were, we looked at each other and wiped the rain from our faces.
At the same time, we looked around to see if we could spot any cats so we could give them the food. We had no luck that evening in the rainstorm; we had to take our food back to the hotel.
“Come on, honey, scatter the food in a few different spots behind the supermarket!” I heard Mischko say. It was easy for her to say, sitting inside while it was pouring beautifully outside and I had just dried myself off.
“Alright then,” I thought aloud, grabbed the box, and ran to the east side of the supermarket, where the rain had likely left things dry.
And indeed, when I got there, I saw a few startled cats who had also sought dry shelter and now didn’t know where to go. It only took a fraction of a second for them to vanish into the darkness. I quickly scattered the leftover pizza by hand; the cheese and tomato sauce smeared between my fingers. When I was done, I sprinted back in a hurry, running right through several puddles in the dark that I couldn’t see. Having run to the east side of the restaurant, I now had to run back directly into the wind and rain.
At the first puddle next to the car, I dunked my hands into the water to wash the grease and tomato sauce off. The whole mess stuck to my fingers, and as I struggled to wash it off, the rain hammered my head almost as if someone were pouring buckets of water on me.
Mischko was waiting in the car with a smiling face, happy to see me, and handed me a tissue. She immediately locked both doors again with the button. Since you can’t easily wash grease off your fingers without dish soap and warm water, when I turned on the windshield wipers, I could still feel the grease sticking between my fingers.
Somehow, I didn’t feel particularly comfortable in this lonely parking lot—the stormy night, the total darkness. We waited a while, and when the first cats emerged from the dark to get to the pizza and spaghetti, we pulled out to the right onto the empty street. Under normal conditions, the drive to our hotel took twenty minutes; this time, we braced ourselves for a longer trip. Mischko turned on the radio. It was shortly after ten. Exhausted from the wind, windsurfing, and swimming, now with a full stomach, while the small windshield wipers worked at full speed, I watched the barely discernible lights of Haleiwa disappear in the rearview mirror through the small, wet rear window.
On the way to the hotel, Mischko usually nodded off, but today she couldn’t find the peace for it. The severe weather made this rainy night truly spooky. No oncoming traffic, no cars behind us.
There were no houses on either side of the road; we were in the middle of the wilderness, embraced by the rainstorm and total darkness.
If I turned off the headlights, I wouldn’t be able to see my own finger in front of my nose. With the windshield wipers on high and the AC blasting at maximum, our radio station crackled from one moment to the next. Then, total silence. The rain had intensified to the point where we could only see a few meters of the road ahead.
On this straight stretch, we were currently crawling forward at under ten miles per hour, where under normal weather conditions at this hour, we’d easily be doing 45 miles per hour. The massive drops made such a racket on our leather convertible roof that it felt as if these giant raindrops were falling directly onto an umbrella right above our heads. Because our roof wasn’t made of metal, we could also clearly hear the loud rustling of the giant palm leaves on both sides. The first raindrops had already found their way inside along my side window, leaking through the unsealed leather roof of the car.
Our high beams were absolutely terrible, making me think of our Camaro back in Berlin and the 220-watt lights I had installed myself as an auto electrician. In Berlin, we had those plus the regular headlights we were driving with now. Having such strong headlights wasn’t legal in Germany, so every time I went in for the technical inspection (TÜV), I had to remove the extra headlights with the high-wattage bulbs beforehand.
Because the constant crackling and the radio station fading in and out got on our nerves, Mischko turned the radio off.
Besides the storm, the howling wind, the loud, heavy downpour on the leather roof above our heads, and the noise of the AC working overtime to dry the fogged-up windshield before our eyes, we could clearly hear the water splashing just a few centimeters below our seats on the car’s undercarriage. Since we were driving slowly through deep puddles on the road, we could distinctly hear the wheels turning through the high water; the water splashed sluggishly against the front and rear fenders.
The entire undercarriage was getting a thorough, non-stop washing. With the relentless, stormy sounds of nature in our ears and no radio, while the AC blasted air straight into our eyes, it became too monotonous after a while, making us even more tired. Completely focused on the few meters of visibility, without the radio playing, and feeling increasingly exhausted, I felt incredibly isolated in the car with Mischko at that moment. It felt as if we were cut off from the world, our lives now entirely dependent on the forces of nature.
Every time I slowed down from ten to five miles per hour to drive through long puddles on the road, I felt like I was crossing a shallow section of the famous Rio Grande in a Jeep.
Even though we were sitting inside the car, the water splashed clearly against the undercarriage just a few centimeters beneath our seats; this splashing could even be felt vibrating through our seats and was distinctly audible. I felt completely exposed, as if I were walking barefoot through a river. I had the feeling that our seats would be completely flooded at any moment.
The closer we got to the hilly landscape and Waimea, the more we heard and saw on the windshield that the rain was intensifying. The dark, black clouds we had spotted clinging to the mountains on our way there were likely even heavier now. The giant raindrops crashed onto the leather fabric above our heads.
I dismissed the thought that the car could be swept off the road by the water flowing down from the mountains; our car was too heavy for that. At the moment, I was being reckless, not thinking about the red mud washing down onto the road from the mountains on our right, carried by the rain and flowing water. As the drive dragged on, it remained monotonous, and we grew increasingly tired.
We were nearing the ocean, which lay right next to the road on our left. Just before Waimea Bay, at the last curve to the right, Mischko tried the radio again.
First, we heard light crackling for a while, but with some effort, Mischko found a station, and the music was back. Since we were currently at the highest point of the road and very close to the ocean, the west wind howled behind us like a possessed spirit. Only the oncoming lane and a drop of about ten meters separated us from the ocean. When the giant breakers crashed against the rocky wall down to our left, the rocks trembled, and the entire road beneath our wheels shook.
We were right in the middle of a storm; it was so eerie, like a horror scene I only knew from movies. The only thing missing was a monster jumping out of the darkness into the middle of the road.
Fully concentrated, crawling at a walking pace with about three meters of visibility, I prepared to turn right. The heavy raindrops splashed against the windshield, the wipers on their highest setting. Because we had been in the car for a while and our bodies were giving off heat, the inside and outside of our windshield were completely fogged up and white. We were looking exclusively through two small, round spots on the glass where the air vents blew directly onto it. Essentially, two small circles had formed on the fogged-up windshield, through which we could just barely make out the wet road ahead. Beneath our seats, we continued to hear the splashing of water washing the undercarriage behind the wheels. Since the road was flooded with rainwater, combined with the water flowing down from the mountains, I couldn’t see the white line dividing the lanes, nor could I see the edge of the road or the asphalt on the ocean side.
Because our Corvette had a fairly long hood, I was glad we were completely alone on the road in this final curve before Waimea. I was tired, my head leaned forward in deep concentration, and the AC vents were blowing directly into my tired eyes. At the same time, I squinted through the two small circles on the fogged windshield, my forehead almost touching the glass, watching carefully to ensure I stayed on the road.
While driving at a walking pace in total darkness around us and turning right, seeing only the water rushing toward me, I felt my front left wheel slowly drop off the edge of the asphalt on the ocean side, centimeter by centimeter, and then climb back up. Once around the mountain, I continued to let the car roll carefully at a walking pace down into Waimea Bay. Barely past the mountain, almost instantly and for just a fraction of a second, everything in front of us lit up. Exactly ahead of us, about fifty meters away, we saw clearly how a bright, electrically charged arrow drilled into the mountain. A lightning strike!
Before our eyes, all of Waimea Beach was illuminated. To my left, I saw giant monster waves rising wildly out of the darkness of the ocean, ready to crash down from their heights onto the sand of Waimea Beach seconds later.
The entire sandy hill of Waimea Beach was covered in white spray. The giant palm trees on the beach bent toward the east. The lightning strike interrupted the loud music on the radio once again. Only loud crackling could be heard. After the lightning struck, everything around us was spooky and dark again. In front of our headlights, visibility was back to a mere two to three meters.
“Shit, that’s all we needed,” was the first thing I muttered, my voice trembling.
“Did you see that?” she asked in a tired, slightly frightened voice.
“I saw it,” I replied.
In the very next moment: “BROMMMMRRRRRRR!!!!” Thunder roared. The mountain to our right and the road beneath our wheels vibrated. Fear gripped me, and only then did it cross my mind that a mudslide could break loose from the right at any second and sweep us into the ocean. Because our leather convertible roof barely muffled the sound, we felt as though we were standing on the road without a car.
The deafening thunder threatened to burst our eardrums. Since the road trembled and vibrated continuously beneath our car during the thunder, and the first wave crashed from a great height onto the beach at the exact same moment, we also felt a massive tremor on the road beneath our wheels and heard a booming sound from our left side.
During the thunder, the crackling from the speakers dragged on endlessly. After that bright projectile shot from the sky, the echo of the thunder rolled across all the mountains far into the distance toward Honolulu. The thunder sounded as if the gods had emptied every beer keg on earth and were rolling the empty metal barrels over our heads for ten to fifteen seconds. During this prolonged thunder, fear crept into my bones; I felt intimidated in that moment.
Internally, I hoped that nothing terrible would happen to us and that we would make it through the rainstorm and thunderstorm safely back to our hotel. Terrified, the first words out of my mouth were, “I don’t like this. Soon we’ll be driving on the other side of the beach, right where the lightning just struck.”
“Lightning doesn’t strike cars,” she said.
“Thanks, I heard that somewhere too,” I replied. “But imagine if the lightning hits a tree in front of us and it falls onto the road; we won’t be able to go anywhere.”
CHAPTER II
As we talked, we rolled at a walking pace down the mountain to the right in total darkness. The giant raindrops splashed in front of our headlights onto the wet road. We slowly approached the most dangerous spot, the lowest point of the road. This was the spot where beachgoers would turn left in their cars into the beach parking lot, or right into Waimea Falls Park.
Just as we reached this lowest point, white saltwater foam flowed in front of our car, moving from the ocean across the road to the right, straight into the entrance of Waimea Falls Park. This foam was from the wave that had flattened out on the beach several seconds ago, back when we came out of the curve and were at the highest point of the road.
In our rented, low-slung sports car, we hoped water wouldn’t get inside, and we hoped we wouldn’t be swept off the road into the slightly lower-lying entrance of Waimea Falls Park. Even though it was totally dark all around us, the white color pierced through the darkness in this slightly sunken entrance to Waimea Falls Park, a sign that a massive lake of saltwater foam had long since formed inside the park.
After heavy rain, this entrance to the park is often closed for several days because of the massive lake that forms; the park is notorious for this. Since we drove this route every evening to Haleiwa and I knew the road well, I drove slowly and with full concentration, relying entirely on feel and keeping the steering wheel straight. Visibility was two to three meters in front of the headlights, with the upcoming twenty meters flooded by saltwater foam, completely obscuring the asphalt. The palm fronds rustled loudly to our left, the rain crashed onto our leather roof, and at the moment, we could again hear water splashing against the undercarriage and our fenders beneath our seats.
We were glad to make it past the lowest point and put the flowing saltwater beneath our wheels behind us. Immediately afterward, I steered left to drive the road up the mountain. Almost in that exact moment, everything lit up around us again. Another lightning bolt discharged, this time only ten to fifteen meters to our right, crashing into the mountain once more. There was a brief crackle, and the radio connection was severed again.
Now we were scared to death. My heart stopped. My hair stood on end; I had goosebumps all over my body. I hunched over, gripping the steering wheel tightly. A total blackout.
Shortly after. “Woow!!” Even though I was in a state of pure terror, I marveled aloud at the nocturnal thunderstorm spectacle. “Magnificent…!”
Because the lightning had drilled into the mountain right before our eyes, not far above our heads, and the illumination lasted a long time, my gaze shifted to my left side in the next second.
I looked far out over the ocean. The view and the panorama in this stormy, dark night made it seem as if the entire ocean were illuminated by a soft dimmer light. Since we were driving our car up the mountain right from the lowest point of the road, our eyes were almost exactly at sea level. The waves building up on the ocean’s surface also towered several meters above sea level.
Between the road taking us up the mountain and the sandy beach on our left, the ocean, about fifteen meters wide here, was completely covered in restless, white saltwater foam. After the mammoth waves crashed down from their heights onto the sandy beach with a thunderous roar in our ears, the white saltwater foam climbed up and flooded the entire sand dune of Waimea Beach. On our east side of Waimea Beach, where we were right now, when the monster waves crashed directly onto the water from a great height, the resulting saltwater foam pushed its way with the water current across the smooth sea level toward Waimea Falls Park, right in our direction.
As this saltwater foam, about two meters high, surged forward with the current over the last thirty meters through the channel between the road we were driving on and the sandy beach dune, the wave of white foam continued to grow taller. Because our eyes were at sea level, and the wave of white foam kept growing past three meters above sea level, we were looking at what appeared to be a wall of water. It looked as if a tsunami were moving toward us, threatening to flood the entire road on our right side with three meters of water in the next few seconds.
Watching this threatening white wall of water moving toward us through the channel, with fear deep in my bones, I instinctively hit the gas to escape this eerie situation as quickly as possible. For just two or three seconds, my speedometer showed about fifteen to twenty miles per hour. We were relieved that, in that lightning-illuminated moment, we were driving straight up the road out of the lowest point of this rain and thunderstorm.
Being higher up now, we had a better view of the ocean. While the giant raindrops splashed loudly against my windshield and shattered into thousands of droplets, my wipers were working at full speed. Even though the blower inside the car was on maximum, our windshield was fogged up all around the edges. Due to the limited visibility, we stared with intense concentration only through the round, clear spots on the windshield ahead of us. The shattered raindrops on the outside of the windshield kept our view continuously blurry.
As far as I could see through the blur, out of the total darkness in the background, spanning about three to four hundred meters of illuminated dark ocean surface ahead of us, dozens of furious mammoth waves surged forward, pushing white saltwater foam toward the beach amidst the rainstorm and thunder.
Now I also had a clear view of the front section on my left side of Waimea Beach where the waves were crashing. The light orange-yellow sand was absolutely invisible; the entire sand dune was covered in white saltwater spray up to its highest point.
As a mammoth wave rose up at that very moment and simultaneously crashed onto the beach, the roar of the impact echoed deafeningly in our ears because the west wind blew directly against my side window. It felt as if I were sitting right on the beach, watching the wave right in front of me. Behind the beach to the west, I could now see the cliff we had driven past about two minutes ago, which had been below us on our left.
As the mammoth wave hit the rock beneath the road right then, crashing against the cliff, white foam shot up to ten meters high onto the road. When we drove past that spot two minutes ago, we had probably mistaken that foam hitting our windshield and my side window for raindrops.
As if under soft dimmer lighting, it was clear to see: the entire sandy beach was covered in white spray, all in the midst of this downpour in the dark. At the same time, I watched the white saltwater foam climb up the sand dune. It crossed the highest point of the beach, flowed down the back, and flooded the entire parking lot, where a lake had likely already formed, just like the one in Waimea Falls Park I had seen on my right seconds ago. It was a natural spectacle you could only witness on a spooky night like this. Even though I was afraid, I was somehow thrilled to be right in the middle of this thunderstorm and experiencing it.
“Magnificent!” I exclaimed loudly again. Since we were out of the danger zone and driving further up the mountain, I felt a momentary sense of relief.
Suddenly, these images were wiped out, vanishing into the darkness as if someone had flipped a light switch. In that same moment, I was virtually blind and had to slam on the brakes. Our car sat on the road in the middle of a downpour and thunderstorm, engulfed in darkness. Almost instantly after the lights went out…
Broooooooommmmmm! Thunder cracked and roared behind us in the sky. For a few seconds, we were blind, seeing absolutely nothing in front of us. Mischko fumbled for the interior light switch. Brommmmmmmm! The thunderous echo and aftershocks dragged on for almost half a minute. Brooooooomm! Broooooooom… rolling south toward Honolulu.
While I sat in the car, still enveloped in total darkness amidst the echoing aftershocks from the mountains behind us, the mountains and the road beneath our car trembled like an earthquake. Suddenly, Mischko found the light switch and turned it on. At once… Boooooommmm! Another crash. The earth shook even harder beneath us; this time, we heard the roar of the next monster wave from our left side. It had just crashed onto the sandy beach.
CHAPTER VI
In the middle of the darkness, as our eyes slowly adjusted to the headlights and the limited visibility, we were surrounded by deafening noise from both sides. Once our eyes had readjusted to our car’s headlights, we could see just two to three meters ahead through our wet windshield, watching giant raindrops splash onto the completely flooded road in front of us.
From our right, the thunderous, echoing roar dragged on over the mountains to the south, gradually growing quieter. From our left, we simultaneously heard the sound of water on the beach, the roar of the ocean, and the rustling of palm leaves as the west wind blew directly at us. Meanwhile, our radio station crackled incessantly in our ears. The torrential downpour continued to make a racket on our leather roof, sounding as if we were standing on the street while someone poured a barrel of water over our umbrella. The AC was loud, working hard to dry the windshield in front of us, while the periphery of the glass remained completely fogged up. Because water flowed down the mountain toward us like a small stream, the wheels kicked it up into the fenders. It splashed as loudly against the undercarriage as it had ten seconds ago at the lowest point of the road, where the spray had washed across the asphalt behind us into Waimea Falls Park. I could just barely make out the water on the covered road and drove up the mountain at a walking pace. I felt incredibly exposed, as if I were walking barefoot up the flooded street.
Being slightly higher up now and on the east side of the beach, the wind hit my left side window even harder, driving heavy raindrops against it with full force. Because I had repeatedly wiped my fogged-up left window with my pizza-greased hand, and because Mischko had briefly turned on the interior light in the dark when we stopped, I could see water from the leaky leather roof continuously streaming straight down the greasy side window into the cabin.
Throughout the cracking thunder and its long, lingering echo, the mountain to our right trembled constantly, and the road beneath us continued to shake.
As the thunder gradually faded, we drove the last forty meters up the flooded road at a walking pace until we reached the curve to the right around the mountain. Our radio station did nothing but crackle the entire time; Mischko remained perfectly silent.
“Whew! That was close,” I said, breaking the silence in the car. “Did you see that?”
“Yes, I thought we were hit,” she replied.
“I felt the exact same way,” I answered. Since we knew the road by heart and knew the next curve wasn’t for another forty meters, I stepped on the gas to reach it faster. Just before the curve, I slowed back down to a walking pace. Now, at this curve, I knew that if I drove straight, I would end up in the ocean, so I was extra careful and incredibly glad we were entirely alone on the road. Because the road was flooded with water flowing from the mountains, I couldn’t properly see the asphalt. Hugging the mountain with the car, I used it for orientation. Our Corvette had a pretty long hood, so I used the oncoming lane in that moment. One comforting detail: the west wind was pushing the car away from the ocean and toward the mountain. Practically at a standstill, I steered the car around the curve, feeling the front left wheel briefly drop off the edge of the asphalt, centimeter by centimeter, and then roll back up onto the concrete.
A quick note about Waimea Falls Park. It’s a major tourist attraction in Hawaii, but since I flew to Hawaii to windsurf, it didn’t appeal to me in the slightest. What I didn’t know was that when there’s barely any rain in Hawaii—during the summer months—the waterfalls are practically dead.
Once around the curve and about ten meters above sea level, we gradually moved away from the ocean, putting about fifty meters between it and the straight road. The mountain to our right and the road were now separated by a flat, wildly overgrown landscape about two hundred meters wide. Along the way, Mischko found the radio station with music again. That night, lightning and thunder accompanied us on the straight stretch all the way to Banzai. During the ten-to-fifteen-minute drive, we repeatedly drove through giant puddles, the palm leaves rustling loudly on both sides.
Since we had moved away from the mountain, it was still pouring rain quite heavily, but the raindrops were smaller. Visibility ahead of us improved slightly, allowing me to increase my speed to about fifteen miles per hour. Just before Banzai, the first houses to our left were completely invisible in the darkness; the power was still out here. The Banzai Pipeline is famous for the surfing championship held there every year.
Five minutes later, we reached Sunset Beach. This residential area, just like Banzai, was still without power. Since we had long since left the Waimea downpour behind, and the rain wasn’t as severe here, my curiosity drove me to pull over at Sunset. I absolutely wanted to shine my headlights onto the ocean and see what a severe storm really looked like here on the North Shore, where the biggest waves rolled in. Since we hadn’t encountered a single car from Haleiwa and were the only ones on the road, I silently slowed down and stopped in the middle of the street.
“What are you doing?” she wanted to know. I turned the car so the front was in the oncoming lane, pointing toward the beach, while our rear remained in our lane.
“Let me be, I just want to take a quick look at the ocean to see what it looks like out there when lightning strikes.”
The high beams lit up the ocean. As the waves reared up at eye level not far in front of us, I got the feeling that a tsunami wave would flood the entire road with at least two meters of water in the very next moment.
Under normal surf conditions with giant waves, the breakers crash at least thirty meters from the road and flood two-thirds of the beach. Now, I watched the waves tower up halfway onto the beach before finally crashing onto the sand. As the water foam surged forward, here too, just like at Waimea Falls Park, it flowed beneath our wheels to the other side of the road behind us.
Because the waves out in the darkness were at eye level, I felt even more scared at that moment than I had earlier in Waimea, where the sand dune blocked the view of the open ocean. There, I only had a small channel with about eight meters of visibility. Here, I had a full view of the entire beach and the vast, open ocean.
St. Peter didn’t make me wait long. Lightning flashed over the ocean once more. A spooky night turned into day for a few seconds: Here at Sunset, dozens of mammoth waves rolled with sheer brute force across the open ocean. Just like before, under the dim illumination, you could blurrily see dozens of white crests of saltwater foam raging and surging forward out of the total darkness. At that moment, I pictured a yacht out there in distress. I was incredibly glad to be inside the car. “Wooow!”
“Magnificent…” Fascinated by these monster waves and the sheer force of nature, I would have loved to stay and watch longer. But as the waves rolled in at various sizes, and white saltwater foam flowed across the asphalt to the other side of the road behind us… Mischko spoke up.
“Let’s get out of here, this is too dangerous!” I heard her frightened voice.
She didn’t have to tell me twice. The lightning flashed once, and that was enough for me. Without hesitation, I carefully turned the car back into our lane and drove toward our hotel.
We had been driving for at least 40 minutes to cover just seven kilometers.
The entire time since we left Haleiwa, not a single car had approached us or followed us. The further we moved away from Sunset Beach, the less we heard the drumming from the sky. Although we weren’t speaking, we both marveled and noticed almost simultaneously that it seemed to be raining even less here.
Indeed. From here, we had a ten-minute drive left to our hotel. Our radio was receiving the Keej Kju M Kju signal better, and the music lifted our spirits. My thoughts wandered freely again. The first thing I thought about was the ships that might be out there. If a ship was in distress somewhere between LA and Honolulu, how quickly would they get help? Or the people living here in these wooden houses. In this wind, every board must be creaking. They must be simultaneously fearing for their property.
I knew that kind of fear from our trips to Yugoslavia. Whenever there was a storm, the locals would tell us the next morning that they hadn’t slept a wink, terrified that their roof tiles would fly off.
At that moment, I thought back to our departure from Berlin. It had been minus 19 degrees Celsius. When we arrived here, it was a balmy 28 degrees. We had been here for three weeks now; sure, we had bad weather, but at least it was warm and not freezing like Berlin. And tomorrow it would be beautiful again.
That was what we loved about this place since the day we arrived. Sun and blue skies every day. Lying alone on the beach, we dared to dream about how beautiful it would be to live here.
The only thing is, the house would have to be built of stone, and if I had a house, I’d prefer it to be in the Kailua area, in the southeast of the island. While daydreaming, I spotted the first light on the left side. It wasn’t the tiki torches that usually burn under normal weather conditions at the entrance leading to the hotel on the left side of the road.
Right now, it was just emergency lighting; likely due to the power outage across the entire North Shore, the hotel had switched on its emergency generator. As we turned left at the emergency light, we still had half a mile to go to the hotel. The speed limit was five miles per hour, enforced by dozens of speed bumps.
If anyone dared to drive faster, the undercarriage of their car would smash into the bumps, which could cause serious damage. In the nineties, we had never seen anything like that in Germany. Since arriving here, I noticed many drivers didn’t pay attention to them. Whenever we drove to or from the hotel with the top down in our sports car, we were busy admiring the beautiful flowering trees or watching the golf course. With our eyes mostly on the scenery, we frequently heard the crunch of metal against asphalt. Only then would my eyes dart back to the road, spotting cars approaching or coming up behind us.
Those were definitely drivers who had rented their cars from a rental agency, just like us.
The oncoming lane was separated by a high curb. In the median between these two lanes, gardeners had planted flowers protected by these high curbs.
The beautiful blossoms on the trees lining both sides were invisible at the moment because it was quite dark. Our headlights could just barely pick out the spots where the speed bumps were located.
During the day, these trees look like giant bouquets of flowers. Golf courses had been established as part of the hotel complex on both sides. Resorts, smaller houses, and a Country Club. During the day, as we left the complex in our car after breakfast, we would often stop and amuse ourselves. The small Japanese and Chinese tourists were funny. When they took their large golf bags filled with clubs out of their carts and set them on the grass next to them, the bags were as tall as they were.
Then there were the small electric carts constantly driving up and down the hills. We only knew those from movies. And the Asians with their matching caps—sometimes a dozen of them would stand motionless on the green grass in their white suits, waiting and watching until one of them holed out. Well, they had their hobby, and I had mine. Aside from the caps, white gloves, and glasses, they had top-tier equipment. Sometimes Mischko and I would sit in the car in the middle of the road and place bets. Well, is he going to sink it? Yes or no.
The guests playing here traveled to Hawaii solely for golf. Most stayed just a week and then had to head back. Our waitresses at the hotel told us they had never seen anyone stay as long as we planned to. Five weeks. We hadn’t known that, and we also knew we weren’t rich.
But hey, we had a dream to visit Hawaii once, and here we were. Five weeks. As we struggled through the darkness at a walking pace, carefully navigating the speed bumps, rain was still pattering above our heads, though not as loudly as earlier at Waimea Falls. When we reached the halfway point of that half-mile stretch leading from the main road to the hotel, suddenly, it stopped raining completely. Just like that, as if on command. We were both astonished and laughed out loud. We kept driving, and half a minute later, it poured down again, as if someone had turned a water valve back on.
The car’s windshield wipers were back on high speed.
We were glad we would be at the hotel soon. The curb served as our guide. Two hundred meters before the hotel, there is a small guardhouse with a barrier on both sides. I had to stop the car, roll down my window in the heavy rain, and press the button. Once a ticket popped out and I took it, the barrier lifted. In that dark, unlit little house, during this severe storm, a guard was actually still sitting there. “Aloha!” we greeted him and drove in.
These guards are there to collect parking fees from visitors when they leave. Since we were staying at the hotel long-term, we had free parking, but we still had to pull a ticket every time we entered. Usually, when we came in or went out, if there was no car behind us, they would chat with us. This evening, in the pouring rain, that wasn’t possible.
Eric was waiting in front of the hotel.
A broad-shouldered, blonde, thirty-year-old guy from Alaska. Married to a student, a native of Palau. They were studying something related to tourism. He earned his money here, which, along with social assistance, had to be enough for them to survive. It was impressive; both were studying and they had four children.
A five-year-old, a four-year-old, and two-year-old twins—all boys. They lived in a housing complex behind the Mormon temple reserved solely for people needing social assistance. Once he finished his studies, he would have to move out of that complex. Technically, he wasn’t allowed to invite hotel guests over. When he invited us, he told us not to tell anyone, or he’d lose his job.
On our first visit to his home, we brought two kilos of candy. It was the second time that day the kids had gone wild. Even the dad was thrilled and tried to trick the kids into stealing their candy. Just for fun, of course.
When we arrived late on this rainy evening, he saw us from a distance, smiled, and welcomed us as he always did, standing under the canopy at the hotel entrance. Smiling, he opened Mischko’s door as usual. When we got out…
“I missed you guys and was worried,” were the first words he said. “I thought you crashed into the sea somewhere and were lost.” While I stood there smiling, not understanding a thing, Mischko translated for me so I knew what they were talking about.
Since he was alone late at night and all the guests were already in bed, he had more time to chat with us.
Mischko told him about our horrifying experience at Waimea Falls Park, the lightning strikes nearby, and the heavy surf washing over the road. After a few minutes, I handed him the car keys, and Mischko handed him his tip.
“Thank you very much and good night.” That was the only thing I understood.
Straight to bed, we thought. When we entered the hotel, we noticed that the live band, which normally played on our right, wasn’t playing tonight for the first time since we arrived. From the entrance on the southeast side, we now had to walk left, all the way through the hotel to our elevators. The reception was located in the middle of the hotel on the left side. The entire hotel felt deserted. Because we were talking quietly, the person at the reception was busy and didn’t notice us.
We continued walking past the small shops, which were closed at this hour, as they were every evening. A few meters before the elevator was a pedestal where a parrot usually hung out during the day, entertaining the tourists. He had long since been covered in his cage and was fast asleep.
When we pressed the call button for the elevator, there wasn’t much traffic at this hour, so the doors opened immediately. The weather today also played a part in why the elevator doors opened so fast. On our floor, we encountered a person dressed as a security guard, making sure everything here was following the rules.
When we entered our room, we brushed our teeth at top speed and hopped into bed. As always, I was the last one to fall asleep; Mischko was asleep the moment we hit the bed.
Outside, the wind howled, and the rain continued to patter against our balcony, which didn’t bother Mischko at all. She was so tired, and she loved to sleep. Meanwhile, I listened to the waves repeatedly flattening out over the razor-sharp reefs. I wondered what we would do the next day and where we would go if the wind and rain persisted. Minute by minute, I grew tired, and eventually, I fell asleep without even realizing it. I can explain everything, I can control all my actions, but falling asleep—I still can’t control that to this day. The next morning, I woke up first, as always. I tuned my senses to hear what was going on outside.
It was as stormy as the night before; the palm trees rustled outside the window. I got up quietly and tried to carefully pull the heavy drapes slightly aside to see what time it was and what was happening out there.
Daylight pierced our pitch-black room like an arrow. The sun had been up for a while, clouds were barely visible, and the palm trees bent in the strong wind as if they would snap at any moment.
From their fronds, I could see that the wind was still coming from the west. It could be a wonderful windsurfing day if the wind keeps up, crossed my mind. Shortly after, I let the curtain fall slightly back into place. With a little light, I grabbed my diary to record the events of the previous day. When I finished, I wrote a few postcards.
I let Mischko sleep undisturbed for a while. Eventually, when I was almost done, she turned over and asked for the time. It was our breakfast time. She went to the bathroom first; shortly after, I finished writing and got ready for the bathroom.
It was always a pleasure to take a warm shower every morning in this luxury hotel. Everything was clean and beautifully decorated. Everything was perfect, whether in our bedroom or the bathroom. Without spending too much time in the bathroom, we were in the elevator a few minutes later, heading down to the restaurant.
As always, a hostess in traditional Hawaiian attire waited in front of the restaurant entrance. Flowers in her hair, a dress with pink floral patterns. When Mischko gave her our name, she noted it on the pad she carried, then placed it on a table and led us to a non-smoking table.
After showing us the table and wishing us a good appetite, she returned to the entrance. Six waitresses were serving here simultaneously. All six were dressed identically, in Hawaiian style, of course. Since we didn’t need waitresses—we served ourselves at the buffet—one of us usually went to the buffet first while the other stayed at the table to watch our things, even though it wasn’t really necessary here. I was barely alone at the table before the first lady appeared. “Coffee?” With my poor English, I could only guess what she wanted. I nodded, and in the meantime, Mischko returned. Thank God! I thought.
Now the two of them started chatting, just like every morning. Most tourists stayed at the hotel for a week at most. Because we had been living at the hotel for a while and had breakfast here every morning, the friendly Hawaiian women came over to us, offering the best tips on things to do or where to shop.
One day, after returning to the hotel by car, we had bought a pineapple from locals at a roadside stand not far away. Because everyone in the restaurant knew us by then, Mischko told a waitress that we bought a pineapple but didn’t have a knife. The waitress said it was no problem; we should bring our pineapple to the restaurant. While we had breakfast, they would slice our pineapple in the kitchen. We brought it down from our room the next day. A waitress took it to the kitchen. Ten minutes later, she came out and showed us what we had been sold—the pineapple looked terrible inside. It was completely rotten. They felt sorry for us and brought us a whole sliced pineapple from their kitchen. We were, of course, grateful and happy at that moment.
The Hawaiian alphabet has sixteen letters; while talking with us, they taught us a few phrases. They were always thrilled when we spoke to them in Hawaiian. By the time this vacation ended, I spoke better Hawaiian than English. Like every morning, we ate until we were stuffed.
After all, we paid $25 per person every morning. Each of us had a five-dollar credit included with the room, so breakfast cost us a total of forty dollars, for five weeks, plus a tip. During breakfast and our slow digestion, we enjoyed the beautiful view.
Through the giant, black-tinted windows stretching from floor to ceiling, we had a perfect view. This morning, too, the sun was shining outside to our left. Down below by the pool, the attendant had arrived, setting out the lounge chairs and briefly wiping away the heavy moisture left over from the night. This morning, the pipelines rolled over razor-sharp reefs into Kawela Bay right outside our window, so we kept our eyes glued to the first surfers, watching them until they were swallowed by the wave, only to see them emerge from the white spray moments later.
As we went to grab dessert, Virginia, a Brazilian woman who worked there, came over. She told us she hadn’t been able to close her eyes all night because of the strong wind and thunderstorms; the house she lived in threatened to collapse.
The creaking of the boards was so loud it was impossible to fall asleep. She then told us that between Sunset Beach and Haleiwa, water had washed over the road, forcing them to close it. The connection between the east and west for cars was severed. We both grinned, and Mischko told her we had driven back from Haleiwa just before midnight, while water was flowing under our wheels. We grinned, thinking how lucky we were that they hadn’t closed the road earlier. It must have happened right around the time we drove past Waimea; they must have closed the road shortly after.
She told us to be careful in the future. Once she had talked enough with us, we said goodbye, left a ten percent tip, and exited the restaurant. Outside, the next Brazilian awaited us. This time it was a bird of paradise from Brazil, a parrot named Kalinka or Minka.
As we approached and she recognized us, she squawked from a distance, “Aloooha!!! Alooha!!!”
The bird was bright orange on its head, under its neck, across its belly, and down to its feet. The back feathers were blue, and the rest was yellow. She was about forty centimeters tall. Her wings were slightly clipped so she couldn’t fly away.
Except for her handler, who put her in her cage to sleep every evening, no one was allowed to touch this bird. The guy who worked here had three jobs, taking all three so he could feed his family. He looked Polynesian. He told us he worked eighteen hours a day. I couldn’t believe it, because after eight hours in Berlin, I’m happy to go home.
This wild bird had already bitten a few ears and had occasionally damaged tourists’ necklaces or ripped them off their necks. A few people even had to be taken to the clinic. But the employee didn’t just talk; he was a good listener, wanting to know a lot about us, what we did, and what life in Germany was like.
The pedestal where Kalinka did her rounds was about six meters from the elevator. When guests went to their rooms or came out of the elevator in the morning for breakfast, Kalinka was always in their line of sight.
A round mahogany plate stood a meter and a half off the ground. On this round plate, which was seventy centimeters in diameter, was her food.
A gilded ring of the same diameter was mounted vertically in the center of the plate. A swing hung in the middle of the ring.
Two vertical gilded poles were mounted on both sides at the bottom of the plate. They went straight up from the plate to the center of the ring, where they were attached. Besides massacring tourists, she had another hobby.
While swinging on the swing in the middle of the ring, she would also whittle a stick she currently held between her claws and beak. While squawking “Aloha” at us, she held her stick firmly in her claws. From the very first day, we enjoyed watching the bird. Now, since that day, we always took the time to see her.
While Mischko spoke to her in English, I talked so much trash in German, which the bird couldn’t care less about. She couldn’t understand me anyway. While we talked to her, she constantly turned her back to us, swinging on her swing.
Then she repeatedly grabbed the side of the vertically mounted golden ring that held her swing. Holding on to the pole with her claws, she would slide down almost all the way to the mahogany plate. She would hang there for a while. Claws up, head down, she twisted her head and looked at us as if she were doing a headstand and staring at us from below. While watching us, she constantly twisted her head, hanging from one side to the other. A truly seductive bird of paradise. That seemed to be how she lured her victims until they got careless, and then she would strike.
CHAPTER III
For the first four days, we never walked past without interacting with her for at least fifteen minutes, both morning and evening. On the fifth day, she seemed bored with the stick in her beak. We approached her quietly so she wouldn’t notice us.
“Good morning, Kalinka…. Kalinkaaaa. … Hellou… Kalinka!!!” After several attempts, we figured it would be like every other day. She hadn’t made a sound for four days straight. Neither morning nor evening. On this fifth day, a few other guests came over after a while. They took photos with the pedestal where Kalinka, the orange, blue, and yellow parrot, stood. Shortly after, all the guests left. We kept trying to talk to her. When it got too stupid and boring, we agreed it was time to head to the beach. She just gave us a dumb look. We turned around, took a few steps toward the elevator…
“Hellou!!! Hellou!!!” she squawked after us. We looked each other in the eye and turned back to her. She looked at us. Mischko and I laughed, looked at her, and were overjoyed because we could hardly believe it. Until that day, we had only heard her speak when the employee prompted her. She didn’t say anything now, just looked at us as if she wanted to tell us something. While we walked up to her, thrilled, she looked and squawked for a second time, “Hellou!!”
We were back with her, played a while longer, trying to get her to speak again. A few times she said other words that were hard to understand. Since it was getting late, we finally headed to the beach. Over the next few days, she loosened up. She kept looking at us, played with the little stick in her beak, and tried to outsmart us with her charm.
Eventually, I offered her my hand. She gripped it so hard I had to pull back. After several attempts, she made it to the edge of her horizontal golden perch mounted in the middle of the golden ring. Slowly, she extended one claw toward my outstretched hand.
She held onto my skin really tightly with one claw for a while, seductively twisted her head down again, and looked at me sideways from below. As if asking, May I really step onto your hand?
Then she dared to shift her entire body weight onto the claw gripping me and slowly took her first step of the morning. For the first time, she moved her second claw from the perch onto my hand. When I tried to lift her, she squawked, decided to cling to the perch instead, and pulled her second claw back off my hand.
Then I tried a different approach. I offered her my finger. I knew it might hurt. Mischko couldn’t watch. Kalinka carefully stretched her neck, opened her beak, and touched me for the first time with her black, leathery tongue. It felt as if she had touched me with a piece of leather rag; then she slowly closed her beak. The pressure increased.
“Ouch!” I yelled softly. At that moment, she let go of my finger and looked at me.
“That actually hurts!” I told her in German, naturally. And with that, we had gotten a little closer.
She knew at that moment that it hurt me and when she should stop. After a few attempts, she finally climbed onto my hand and took a proper walk up my entire arm. When I tried to lift my arm, moving her just ten centimeters away from the pedestal, she immediately jumped back onto the perch.
Day by day, she trusted me more and more, eventually coming closer and closer to my ear. When I noticed she was dead set on my ear, I suddenly moved my hand down so quickly that she kept getting scared she would fall. She fluttered her colorful wings a few times and repeatedly landed back on the pedestal.
Day by day, she realized she wasn’t allowed too close to my ears and simply contented herself with standing on my hand up to the elbow. Naturally, I hoped she wouldn’t spot my veins as a target. And so, she waited for us every morning.
It was the same this morning after the stormy night. “Heelouuu! Hellou!!” she greeted us like an old grandma, clearly happy. As soon as I got close to her and spoke to her, I extended my arm. She jumped down from the perch and looked behind her. She was fixated on the green plant beneath her brown mahogany plate, which was at least a meter in diameter. It was a type of palm. Kalinka’s pedestal was set up over the palm.
Since she couldn’t fly, it was impossible for her to reach it. This morning too, she begged with a look no human could resist, staring downward. An older couple was watching us and what we were doing with her. As soon as I got close to the plant, Zap! she had the plant’s leaves in her beak.
“No! Nooo!” I yelled into her ear. It was too late. She had what she had wanted for days. Since she couldn’t get a piece of my earlobe, she finally got the plant with the green leaves. With all my strength, I tried to separate her from the plant and lift her. While pulling up, she squawked and screamed so loudly and continuously as if I were strangling her. While screaming, she kept a firm grip on the plant with her beak.
She wouldn’t let go. With all my strength, I lifted her toward the pedestal and her mahogany plate. Suddenly, my hand holding the bird flew upward. In that same moment, Mischko, the bird, and I were all startled. What happened?
As my hand shot up with lightning speed, Kalinka fluttered her wings in a panic and squawked even louder. Every guest in the hotel must have heard her at that moment.
Hanging from her beak was a third of that plant, stretching almost from the soil it was planted in all the way up to its highest tip. In a fraction of a second, a beautiful plant became a crippled plant. Having just destroyed the hotel’s decoration, I was shocked and incredibly embarrassed.
In that moment, I just hoped the hotel manager didn’t see. He was at the reception in the middle of the hotel, about twenty-five meters away from me. Except for the older couple, there were no other onlookers nearby. Quick as a flash, I put Kalinka back on her perch, the bush still in her beak.
The Americans laughed. Even though we were quite embarrassed, we had to laugh along. As the bird stood on the golden pedestal perch, the green bush still in her beak, it hung miserably in the air beneath the mahogany plate, dangling over the damaged main plant.
While the parrot gripped the perch with both feet and held the plant in her beak, I pulled down on the plant with all my might. She squawked loudly and wouldn’t yield. I had to pull the plant out. Only when she was almost pulled off did she start fluttering her wings. Afraid of falling from that height, she squawked even louder and finally dropped the bush from her beak.
I quickly tried to place the green bush back exactly where it had been, so it hung between the other branches and wouldn’t be immediately noticeable. On my first attempt to just lean it back into place, the severed third immediately fell onto the clean, floral carpet. The American couple said something to us. I was sorry I couldn’t understand a word. I tried again. I simply couldn’t put it back into the vase without it being obvious. The bush kept sliding out of the large pot onto the carpet at my feet. Every time the bush fell, the Americans laughed.
Mischko said, “Come on, let’s go. If any of the staff see this, we’ll get in trouble!” I just jammed the torn green branch into the wrong side between the other branches, and then we quickly vanished into the elevator that had just arrived. When the doors closed behind us, we looked at each other. “Oh boy!!” If anyone from the hotel had seen that.
The embarrassment was still clearly visible on our faces. We felt guilty. Up in our room, we finally took a breath. A few minutes later, Mischko picked up the phone. “Good morning!” I knew she was ordering our car from the Bell Captain. She hadn’t even stated her name yet. “Good morning, Mrs. Shark!”
We looked at each other. “How do you know who is on the phone?!” Mischko wanted to know. “I recognized your voice!” I guessed what he had said. It was Mike, the American. He had relieved Eric from the night shift. While Mischko went to the bathroom, I gathered our things from the balcony and packed them into the beach bag.
With beach towels, sunscreen, books, cookies, a camera, and some surf gear, the bag was full. “Okay, done,” I heard Mischko say, emerging from the bathroom. She walked over to the bag, and as she tried to lift it, “Do you have bombs in here?”
“Of course, just like every day,” I thought aloud. Shortly after, I hoisted my windsurfing board onto my right shoulder, and tucked the mast, boom, and sail under my left arm. When she opened the door and signaled from outside that no hotel guests were coming, I was able to leave our room. We did this every day to avoid skewering a hotel guest with the fiberglass nose of the board.
Mischko was responsible for closing our hotel room door. To the left, we had to walk the long way down the carpeted hallway to the elevator, which arrived shortly after and was full, just like every morning. Since we had three elevators and didn’t know when the next one would come, I placed my gear on the carpet in the middle of the empty hallway and waited. When it chimed, signaling the elevator had arrived, I bent down to lift the board off the floor.
After the doors opened, Mischko took the bag, went into the corner of the elevator, put the heavy load down on the floor, and tried to quickly press the button to hold the doors open for a moment, as she always did.
“Shit!” I heard her curse and watched the doors close. I was left standing outside the closed doors with the board in my hand. The elevator chimed again and went down without Adam. At that moment, I thought I was losing my mind. The bag really seemed to be a bit heavier this morning, as she failed to keep the door open for the very first time. I put the board back down on the floor, pressed the button, and listened as Mischko’s elevator continued downward. A few minutes later, I heard an elevator arrive; it chimed, and the doors opened.
The elevator was empty. I walked in, pressed the button again, pulled the emergency stop, loaded my gear, and once everything was inside, I was alone on our floor and rode down by myself. On the way down, the elevator stopped once, and a few Japanese tourists got in. One of them said something to me. “I don’t understand!” That I could say perfectly. Aside from “I love you,” that was the only thing I knew.
“Where are you from?” I knew he had asked me something, plus we had been asked that several times before. “From” was easy for me to remember. It sounds almost like the German “von.” The rest I could figure out. Blindly, I answered, “Oh, Germany!” and grinned. Seconds later, the elevator stopped at the bottom.
One of the Japanese tourists held the door open so I could get out. I lifted the board off the floor, along with my bag containing the sail and the boom. As I walked out, I looked for Mischko. She wasn’t there! While I was taking my gear out of the elevator piece by piece, I heard the elevator next door. The doors opened. I saw her smiling face. “Oh, sorry honey, the elevator closed so fast, I couldn’t help it!” She almost died laughing. The Japanese tourists laughed along, even though they had no idea what had just happened. I thanked them for holding the door and wished them a nice day.
“Yeah, right!! That’s how it is, you’re just too slow, the elevator was simply too fast,” I joked. Since we hadn’t seen each other for a few minutes, we quickly caught up on what we had experienced in the meantime. How she rode down, then back up, and then down again, while I only rode down once.
This time, we sneaked past Kalinka so she wouldn’t see us. We pretended not to notice her. “Hellouuu!!!” “Hellouuuu!!!” Because we had often visited her with the board, she recognized us. “Shut your trap!” I yelled back and kept walking. It’s a good thing she didn’t know our names; instead of “Hellouuu,” she would be calling out right now, “Adaaaaam! Come play a little more, Adaaaam!” Sometimes it’s good that birds can’t talk. We left the squawking behind us. The manager in the middle of the hotel to our right was so busy with her papers that she didn’t notice us walking by.
As we walked the long way from the west side to the east side of the hotel toward the exit, I noticed again this morning how the eyes of several hotel guests were glued to my sparkling, colorful fiberglass slalom board. Over the past few weeks, complete strangers had approached us time and again. Always the same phrase: “Nice board!” We constantly struck up conversations this way, leaving Mischko to handle everything since she was the only one who spoke English.
After all, I couldn’t speak English. They touched the board, stood next to us, and took photos; a few exchanged addresses with us. We enjoyed this; after all, we were the ones being admired, and not just because of our unique board.
They couldn’t believe that we were so young and spending five weeks in this expensive hotel, while they usually left the island and flew home after three to seven days at most.
Writing this today and thinking about how we spent five weeks at the Hilton Hotel, paying $285 a night without meals… Back then, the Deutsche Mark was very weak. We had to pay two Marks and thirty Pfennigs for one Dollar. That meant we paid over six hundred Marks every night just for accommodation. Meanwhile, my annual salary was only nineteen thousand Marks. The accommodation cost more than my yearly salary. But since we thought we were only flying to Hawaii once in our lives, it was worth the money to us back then.
I still can’t believe today that we paid so much money just for accommodation.
In Berlin, I had specifically bought a travel bag for the board. Just in case I took the board on a trip like this one to Hawaii, the board was supposed to be carried in the bag all the way to the beach. The bag was meant to protect the board from accidental scratches or intense sun rays. I deliberately left the bag in the room so people could see what a custom board I had.
Proudly, I presented it to the hungry eyes of hotel guests from all over the world. The board’s design: The back half of the board’s deck was painted with glittering black and burgundy colors. Black and burgundy stripes, about ten centimeters wide, ran from the middle of the board to the tail, dotted with white snowflakes. When the sun shined on them, these snowflakes glittered as if they were real. The front half of the board, from the middle to the nose, was yellow. The smooth outer edges on the back half transitioned into red. This glossy burgundy color connected to the bottom gliding surface, which also featured two different designs. On the bottom surface near the nose, a giant wave was breaking, with a windsurfer executing a radical maneuver inside it. The board was yellow down to the bottom half. Scattered across the yellow surface were thirteen light green, glittering stars, up to eight centimeters large. The back half of the board was burgundy, featuring five long black longitudinal stripes drawn from the middle to the tail, matching the deck on top.
I had actually seen on TV how Hawaiians simply tuck their bare boards under their arms and head straight for the waves. Maybe I didn’t want to be an exception. But honestly, I enjoyed those looks every single time. After all, I’m the one who owns the board, and I’m the one heading out into the waves. There were three guests in the hotel who had smaller, cheap white boards. But they were only riding the waves. In Hawaii, they say the rich, wealthy Hawaiians windsurf like I do. The poorer Hawaiians just surf and ride the waves, because they can barely afford a board for around $300, which is the board for wave riding.
I didn’t want to show off that I was rich; I was simply proud to have such a beautiful board, even though I certainly didn’t master it like a pro. As we walked past the reception on our right, I saw some tourists engaging the second parrot near the exit on our left.
While we were still in the middle of the hotel, outside in front of the hotel entrance, I saw Mike looking in our direction to see if he could spot us. Every morning, when we came down from our room, as soon as he saw us from a distance—and knowing Mischko was lugging a heavy bag every day—he always walked into the hotel to meet us. This was our morning ritual.
Every morning for three weeks, we felt like we were in seventh heaven. Like Hollywood stars. A bright red, gleaming, open Corvette Stingray waited for us in the driveway right in front of the hotel entrance.
“Good morning, guys!” he greeted us from a distance with his friendly smile. Mike is more of a blond than a dark-haired American; he had a broad face, and was built and tall like me. As soon as Mike reached us, he took the bag from her hand, as he did every morning, prompting a sigh of relief from Mischko.
He wanted to know how we slept last night as we walked the last twenty meters through the hotel to the exit, where the open Corvette convertible awaited us. When we reached the car, he placed Mischko’s heavily loaded white bag into the open trunk. This white Adidas bag was also something special. Ivan Lendl, a multiple-time world tennis champion, was currently advertising the bag. I hadn’t bought it because he advertised for Adidas, but because it had a unique design with blue stripes.
While Mischko waited next to the car, Mike and I loaded the gear together over the back emergency seats into the car. At the same time, he told us about the suffering of the locals from the previous night. He had been scared himself since his house was also made of wood.
Since my mast, stored in its bag, came in two pieces, one end of the bag rested under the driver’s seat. The other half leaned over the back seats, and the end of the bag pointed diagonally up into the sky. I did the same with the boom. I positioned the board so the bottom with the straps faced the sky, carefully leaning the tip under Mischko’s seat.
Exactly like the California Beach Boys did in the movies. Mike chatted with us for a while until the phone rang.
As Mike and I loaded the gear, Mischko and I truly felt like we were in Hollywood.
While he closed the door behind Mischko and said his goodbyes, the phone, located about ten meters from the front of the car, rang incessantly. He walked over to the phone, pocketing the tip he got from us every morning. We were generous; I gave him five dollars every time, regardless of whether he was picking the car up or parking it in the lot, which was about thirty meters from the hotel entrance.
I was generous, as always, because during this vacation, I thought I would never return to Hawaii. The day we were at Eric’s house, Eric said to Mischko: “Adam is the biggest tipper I’ve ever seen.” He told us he had never received five dollars from a guest; at most, a guest might give two dollars by mistake. All the other guests only ever gave a dollar.
If either Eric or Mike was working early in the morning and we returned from the beach early, that guy got ten dollars a day for parking the car in front of the hotel and then moving it to the lot twice. Since we also went to Pizza Hut every evening, they would park the car right at the hotel entrance without us even asking, knowing we’d be heading to Pizza Hut half an hour later. Even when the car was parked right in front of the hotel, that guy received at least a fifteen-dollar tip from me that same evening because he was always still there when we returned from dinner and went to sleep. I could see the joy on their faces every time they got to sit in the expensive sports car and drive it a bit, even if it was just to the parking lot.
Duty called. While Mike was on the phone, he kept looking over at us. We put our sunglasses on. First, we drove straight toward his booth, where his phone was mounted on a small podium made of gleaming mahogany, about a meter wide and ten meters from our parked car. As we drove toward him and turned left around the flowers dividing the entrance and exit, he was on Mischko’s right side.
Mike, despite having a guest on the phone, waved, smiled, and called out to us: “See you later alligator!” “In a while crocodile!” Mischko replied. After I navigated the U-turn with our car, Mike was visible in my rearview mirror. Seeing us wiggling our hands—pinky and thumb extended—rapidly left and right above our heads, he continued to smile, holding the phone with one hand and waving back at us in the same manner with the other. The Hawaiian greeting. Hang Loose.
We drove slowly, at 5 miles per hour, leaving the front canopy behind the hotel entrance. The front canopy was supported by at least six pillars, each about eighty centimeters in diameter. Because these metal pillars, plated in chrome gold, were cleaned and polished every morning, they gleamed in the early sun’s rays as if made of solid gold.
Leaving this canopy behind, we felt as though we were driving out of a fairy-tale palace. Barely past the hotel entrance and the pillars, about fifty meters away, came the first speed bump designed to stop cars from driving fast through the resort. Because the sun glared brightly into the car, the electronic digital display on the radio was barely visible—the time: ten thirty-five. Mischko turned on the radio, took a deep breath of the morning air, and exhaled. “Magnificent!” was always the first thing Mischko said.
“What?!” I acted as if I didn’t know what she meant. “Not you, the beautiful air here!” She beamed with happiness and turned up the music on the radio. “When you imagine it’s so cold in Berlin, minus 20 degrees, and we’re breathing this fresh, clean air here in paradise, it’s unbelievable!” “That’s true,” I replied.
We were just approaching the barrier where guests must pay for parking on the hotel grounds. When the Hawaiian woman in the small house situated in the middle of the road recognized us, she greeted us with a friendly smile and an “Aloha!”, just like every morning. Hawaiians say “Aloha” early in the morning, at noon, and in the evening, whenever they see each other and when they say goodbye.
We both replied in stereo: “Aloha!”
“Pehea ‘oe?” I asked her.
“Maika’i no,” she replied, asking us the same in Hawaiian. After we had exhausted everything we knew in Hawaiian, we switched to English.
While chatting with us, she didn’t neglect her duties. The incoming guests pressed the button on the other side of the booth. She greeted them warmly, as is customary, and then turned back to us. The barrier opened automatically, and she wished them a pleasant stay at the hotel.
Virginia, as this employee was named, only needed to handle the payments. Our friendship had begun during the first few days when we drove out of the hotel for the first time and stopped here. It started like this: We greeted her on the first morning. “Aloha!” Following our mutual “Alohas,” she admired the glittering jewel leaning over our seats in the back. “Nice board!”
On our fourth day, while we were chatting with her just before driving out, she said, “Just a moment!” and fumbled around in a compartment in front of her, just below the window. Shortly after, she held two transparent, square plastic containers, about 20 by 20 cm, and placed them on her desk outside the window. She said something else, and as usual, I didn’t understand a word. Mischko told me that we should get out of the car.
We stepped out. Sitting in her little booth, roofed with dry palm leaves, she carefully opened the transparent plastic containers on her desk. Then she stepped out of her little house and approached us. Inside each of the transparent plastic packages, purple and white flowers were visible. When she lifted the first flower necklace out of the package, I recognized a Hawaiian LEI.
We knew this floral ceremony from movies on TV. At the airport in Honolulu, when guests arrive in Hawaii, each one receives a welcoming flower necklace draped around their neck. The Hawaiian Lei.
When we first arrived, I thought we would get the flower necklaces too. Think again, Adam, you thought wrong. We saw people at the airport with flower necklaces, and since we didn’t receive any, I was very disappointed.
The flowers at the airport are only given to guests if someone is there to welcome them, which I obviously didn’t know at the time. For example, hotel guests or friends and relatives. When we arrived in Hawaii, we had no reservations at any hotel or private accommodation. We had nothing; no one knew we were coming.
On this fourth morning, when Virginia told us to get out of the car and gave us the flower necklaces, we were so surprised and rejoiced like little children. We felt like we really were in a movie.
The immense joy on our faces was unmistakable. She told us these weren’t from the hotel. She had bought these flower necklaces for us with her own money as a gift because she liked us. Whether we had cried to her about our disappointment at the airport, I can’t recall. I’m fairly certain we didn’t.
Both necklaces were identical. She draped the first one around Mischko’s neck and hugged her; the second one was for me. It was an unforgettable, beautiful surprise that we haven’t forgotten to this day. Following our arrival at the airport in Honolulu, we had long since written off the necklaces; for us, they only existed in the movies. We had long agreed on that, and then came this surprise from a complete stranger we had never seen in our lives until meeting her at this booth four days prior.
This morning, when she hung the flowers around our necks, we beamed with pure happiness the entire time we chatted with Virginia, smiling happily until the next guest tried to leave the hotel. Because we were long-term guests, spending almost five weeks here, we didn’t have to pay parking fees like the guests staying up to three days or day visitors.
Overjoyed that day, with Hawaiian Leis around our necks given to us by Virginia, we drove to the beach in our open sports car. Blue skies, the sun shining as it always did in the early morning, hot sounds from the radio station in our ears, the board tearing along behind us, the scent of orchids surrounding us, and trees with open flower buds looking like giant bouquets. Virginia made our day so beautiful with those flower necklaces; we felt entirely like we were in a fairy tale.
After the recent stormy, rainy night and the power outage at Pizza Bob and across the entire North Shore, we smiled and said our goodbyes to Virginia this morning with an “Aloha!” Ahead of us was a two-lane road heading toward the main highway, and two lanes coming from the main highway. A green median separated these four lanes between the hotel entrance and exit. This median was about a meter wide and protected by high concrete curbs. In the median, as well as on our right side and the oncoming traffic’s right side, giant trees were planted every fifteen meters on the grass. Between these trees, Hawaiian flowers were planted on the green lawns.
These trees, with their blooming flower buds in various colors, looked like large bouquets. Driving slowly at five miles per hour until we reached the main road, white, red, and pink flower buds flew through the air past our windshield like a fairy tale. Some landed on the lush green grass, others on the gray asphalt, and some went astray, tumbling over our heads and landing behind us on our windsurfing board. When the white flowers fell from the trees and flew through the air, we had the blue sky before our eyes in the background. In that moment, it looked as if giant white snowflakes were falling on us from the blue sky. It looked like it was snowing white flowers—again, just like a fairy tale.
We felt like we were in seventh heaven again. Only in fractions of a second did memories surface of flying out of Berlin, where it was an unbelievable minus 21 degrees Celsius.
Because we were sitting in an open car while chatting with Virginia, the sun beat down directly on us the whole time, whereas she had been in the shade in her little booth. Therefore, even now, early in the morning as we drove over the first speed bump, the first beads of sweat trickled down our foreheads, making their way toward my eyes. I could also feel the first drops of sweat on my back, seeking a path downward, feeling like ants crawling down my spine.
We watched nature truly awaken after last night’s storm, with light steam rising from the wet ground all around us. Countless white pearls reflected the morning sun everywhere in Kawela Bay—on the wet green grass along the roadside, on the blossoms of the trees. There was nothing that wasn’t wet this morning and didn’t sparkle in the sun.
A true fascination of nature. On both our right and left sides, chain-link fences were erected about five meters from the asphalt.
Behind these fences, on the golf resort properties on both sides, steam rose from the green grass high into the blue sky. Driven by the strong west wind, the rustling of wildly waving palm fronds reached our ears.
The first tourists were out on the golf course, all small people from Asia driving their little electric carts. While some sat in their small electric vehicles waiting in the shade of the roof for a hole to open up, others stood in a circle, trying to sink their putts.
We both agreed that the Asians were pretty cute. They were almost as small as the golf bags strapped to the back of their carts. It was particularly funny when they had to take the bags off the carts because they were too short to reach the clubs while the bags were mounted. Once the bag was on the ground, it was almost as tall as they were. When the bags stood next to the golfers and several people clustered around the cart, it was hard to spot the people because both the bags and the golfers were white and motionless.
At the exit, we took the Kamehameha Highway east. It was ten fifty-five when the Kahuku gas station appeared before us. Kahuku is populated entirely by locals, the truly poorer native Hawaiians. Their houses were scattered along both sides of the road.
As I did every morning, I pulled into the gas station on the left. Mischko went inside and shortly after emerged with two giant cups of ice-cold drinks. Our car had a built-in contraption between the seats specifically designed to hold drink cups. It was a standard feature here in the US, designed so people wouldn’t have to hold their plastic cups while driving. After all, it was 1991, and as an auto electrician, I had never seen such a thing in European cars. With two ice-cold drinks in hand, we continued our drive east.
We glanced alternately at the ocean side and then at the mountains to our right. I had to drive carefully on this two-lane road today because we had to navigate countless red, muddy puddles. The mud from the red earth splashed up from our wheels, sticking to the red-painted body of our rented Corvette Stingray.
This red mud came from the mountain we were currently driving past, which sat close to the road on our right. In some places, the asphalt was so dirty it didn’t feel like driving on a road, but rather over a red ploughed field. As the driver, I had to be especially careful not to slip off the road.
At the final curve toward Laie, a police car and a roadblock with several signs were set up.
Construction workers were trying to clear the red mud from the road, or perhaps clearing a blockage preventing water from flowing from the mountains toward the ocean. What a contrast before our eyes: the red mud from the red earth on the road, while everything to our left and right was lush green. The sun was scorching, and these people had to sweat and work in the sun while we just waited to finally continue to the beach.
After about five minutes, when the construction worker—holding a flag, wearing a yellow hard hat and yellow-and-black striped clothing, fully exposed to the sun—waved us through, we slowly drove past. As always, these Hawaiians were friendly, greeting us with a smile and their “Aloha,” all turning to watch our red sports car drive away.
What we noticed is that in Hawaii, at every construction site, no matter where it is, police vehicles are present, and at least one police officer ensures that drivers pass the construction site slowly. We had never seen that in Germany either. As we moved away from the end of the construction site, another worker stood there, also holding a flag. He stopped the oncoming traffic, laughed, and greeted us just as amiably; we greeted him back and slowly drove away from the site.
The mountains on our right began to recede slightly inland. Lush green pastures spread out to our right, populated exclusively by black cows. While some grazed standing up, and others lay on their bellies enjoying their meal, a few just stood there, staring dumbly in our direction. As if they were counting the cars.
An electric fence ensured they couldn’t wander onto the road. To our left, dense forest pressed right up to the road, signaling that Malekahana Beach Park was close by. Locals come here to camp over the weekend. When we pulled into the entrance and I stopped the car, you could see that the entire ground was flooded with water.
I stepped out. My flip-flop sank deep into the red earth. Feeling this… “Eeeewww!!!” I heard Mischko complain from my right. “I’m not getting out here.” I couldn’t help but grin. Realizing I could only free my flip-flop from the mud using my hands, I pulled my foot up. Shortly after, my filthy flip-flop, caked in red earth, landed behind my seat.
It’s just a rental car. Here at Malekahana Beach, we would have had to walk across a three-meter-high lawn just to get into the forest. The forest was muddy too. We would have had to walk twenty meters through the forest to reach the beach. That would be far too messy and would never end well. So we decided to keep driving east.
For a mile, the pastures accompanied us on the right, with wild flora and fauna on the left. After a sharp left curve, the first houses of Laie came into view. In other words, a Salt Lake City in the middle of the Pacific.
Here on the northeast side of the North Shore, predominantly Hawaiian and Samoan Mormons live. The Mormons maintain a large white temple here. Only the surrounding gardens are open to non-believers. They also have a campus for Brigham Young University, where our friend Eric studies, and a Polynesian Cultural Center. One day, when we discovered the white temple nestled in the mountain, surrounded by dense vegetation, we drove up to it and tried to go inside. A young Hawaiian woman explained to us that the temple could only be entered by Mormons.
When we spotted the temple on our right this morning, we turned the car around 180 degrees. This spot is the entrance road leading directly to the temple. We then drove about thirty meters back in the direction we had just come from and pulled off the road. Reversing the car, I parked it tight against a flattened old tree trunk. On the utility pole to my right, a bus sign was attached, indicating a bus stop.
I was parking right against this flattened tree, intended to prevent cars from driving across the green lawn all the way to the beach. It was the end of the line for us. Empty parking lot in the late morning meant the beach would probably be empty too.
Since we had been on the North Shore for three weeks and had never seen a bus drive by here in the past few days, I always parked the car directly under the bus sign, absolutely certain it was a parking spot for people wanting to go to the beach.
What I didn’t know was that it was a bus stop for locals taking the bus to school or the Mormon temple. Because the buses only ran every hour or at specific times, we never saw one, as we rarely looked from the beach toward the car. And why should we? There were no people on the beach, and no one to be seen on the street in this village area. Barely any cars drove by here.
It is actually a bus stop for the Mormon temple. Up until today, following that last stormy night, I had never taken it seriously as a bus stop. We probably never paid attention to it while we were on the beach. Now we only had three meters of mud to traverse, just as bad as in Malekahana where we had stopped earlier.
Because we had to walk to the back to get to the trunk, those three meters of mud and red earth spanned the length of our car. As our flip-flops sank deep into the mud, I finally noticed just how dirty the side of our car looked.
Once over the log, the first thing we did on the grass was wipe our flip-flops clean of the slippery red earth. Gradually, we carried our gear across the lush, wet green grass, thirty meters down to the beach. On the way across the grass, we walked past a house located on our right, about thirty meters away.
To our left stood tall tree trunks soaring up to twenty meters into the sky. The distance between the house and the forest was up to forty meters. I left my windsurfing gear on the grass while Mischko spread out the towels on the sand. We were all alone this morning in a bay that was at least a mile long.
During the day, only the occasional tourist from Honolulu doing an island tour in their rental car would wander through here. Our red Corvette Stingray parked alone by the roadside in the wilderness probably caught their eye. While observing the car, they would automatically see the ocean in the background and suddenly decide to stop briefly and check out the area. They would park illegally at the bus stop, just like me, walk across the grass, and stand on the sand for a moment. When a wave broke, it spread across the entire beach. When the white foam reached their legs, they would giggle loudly and quickly run up the beach. Within five minutes, they would be back on the road.
The locals from this village also come here to swim, but rarely. They usually do so after four o’clock, once they are back from work. Except on weekends, when some are already here in the late morning.
Today, while still standing, the first thing I did was look at the ocean to see what was going on. It seemed as if the waves were tired from the previous night. I looked far out into the open ocean and watched the white crests rolling and crashing repeatedly against a fairly small island to our left, about three hundred meters from the beach. These waves, carrying white saltwater foam, crashed onto the island, the white foam flying across the entire island, which might be about fifteen meters wide. Since I had never experienced strong wind here, I’d never had the opportunity to see this right in front of me. Between the island and the beach, you could tell from the water’s surface that wind was waiting for me.
I wasn’t thrilled about the wind strength at that moment, but that can be deceiving. You think there’s barely any wind, and then when you’re out there, there’s often too much.
When we walked the thirty meters from the road across the grass to the beach, a row of houses stretched out on the right side, starting from three houses and ending at the hill about sixty meters to our right, where the bay concludes. Atop the hill was the next row of houses, built on the edge of the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Palm trees and all sorts of other greenery native to this island surrounded the houses. Beneath the houses, the waves raged, slamming with full force against the black lava rocks.
Hoping there was more wind out there than it appeared, I walked down to Mischko. She was holding sunscreen and waiting for me to help rub her back.
While she tried to wash the sunscreen off her hands in the white foam of a newly arrived wave, I was already back up, wrestling with the knots on my sail bag.
I hated untying knots with my fingers. Hearing me curse, Mischko offered to help. Pretending I was alone, I refused her help. The sun beat down on my back. I was sweating like a pig. It didn’t take long before I was heading back to the car.
“Bring me a can too!” I heard her call out.
When I returned, she was lying on the towel, stretched out on her back with her book in hand.
I sat down on the towel she had laid out next to hers. Sitting there, we first drank our cold drinks and looked at the ocean. White crests rolled behind the small island, about three hundred meters from the beach. To our right, high up on the cliffs near the houses, not a soul was to be seen. The sleeping paradise. The breaking of the waves right in front of us was the only sound in our ears. The white foam rolled up to three meters toward our feet. As this saltwater foam retreated into the ocean, it left behind smooth sand where tiny saltwater bubbles fizzed and popped. Small mounds constantly formed on the smooth sand, from which tiny crabs simultaneously dug themselves out, sprinting across the smooth sand with incredible speed.
They fed on the plankton left behind on the sand. Above our heads, the sky was clear and blue; this bay belonged to us. This was exactly how we had imagined our vacation. What we clueless folks hadn’t imagined was that our car was repeatedly parked at a Hawaiian bus stop, which is illegal.
We were completely alone on the sandy beach again; it was perhaps seventy to a hundred meters to the cliffs on the right. From there, it went steeply up five to six meters to the hill where the locals had built their houses along the cliffs.
To our left, the sandy beach stretched endlessly, eventually forming a semicircle into the ocean, almost a mile and a half to Malekahana Beach. Behind the sandy beach, trees grew densely, reaching almost to the ocean. Wilderness, no beach access from the road.
After enjoying the beautiful, peaceful view together for a while, I returned to my work. I assembled the two-piece mast. After unrolling my 5.2 pink sail, I checked the battens, slid the sail up, and then inserted the power joint into the bottom of the mast.
The hook used to tension the sail was attached to the line, already secured tightly to the power joint. After hooking it into the designated eyelet on the sail, I braced both legs against the mast, gripped the line with both hands, and pulled until the mast started to bend. Just not too much, I thought, before I snap my mast. Once secured, I had to grin, admiring my own strength. Still grinning slightly, I grabbed the boom, adjusted it to shoulder height, and attached it to the mast. Then I moved to the other end of the boom and pulled the line to tension the sail outhaul. With that, the last wrinkles disappeared from the sail. I gave the downhaul line on the power joint at the bottom of the mast one last tug to bend it a bit more.
Next, I tensioned the battens so they sat firmly in their pockets. Shortly after, I inserted the mast and sail into the universal joint on my slalom board.
After some dry muscle exercises, I carried the gear off the grass, down onto the sand, and laid it not far from Mischko. We agreed to go swimming together. “Wuuuuuaaahhh!” Mischko screamed at her very first contact with the water, as it was incredibly cold. As I stepped in, I realized that last night’s storm had churned the water up from below, making it much colder than the previous days.
“Indeed…!” I agreed with her. Standing knee-deep in the water, a one-meter wave took us so by surprise that we were completely soaked a second later. Now there was nothing stopping us from going for a swim.
After a while, we didn’t feel the cold anymore. Our bodies had adapted to the water temperature so well that we didn’t even notice how long we had been in.
Mischko: “Do you think the locals find the water cold?”
Me: “How should I know?”
Mischko: “I bet the younger ones don’t mind.”
We joked around, looked around, admired everything there was to see, swam, and played in the waves. Magnificent! “Magnificent” was the word we both uttered most frequently that morning.
Mischko: “A true paradise, where else can you find this?!” We pictured the overcrowded beaches of Waikiki, Acapulco, or the European beaches. This wasn’t our first time here today. On the west side, on the grass almost near the forest, there is a shower. When we got out of the water, we could immediately rinse the salt off our backs.
Looking at the first house, which sat almost right on the beach, we both daydreamed out loud. How beautiful it would be if it were ours. Whether this house was for sale—and if it was, I certainly couldn’t afford it. Why would anyone sell a house like this? I wondered. I wouldn’t do it if it were mine. We looked back up at the cliffs and the houses. Every house has its own garden. The long leaves of the palm trees swayed back and forth. Bushes grew right on the edge over the ocean. It looked incredibly wild and natural. Once we were out for a bit, a cold breeze from the west prompted us to quickly dry off with our towels.
It was lunchtime; the sun had reached its peak. Looking straight ahead, the small island rose like a lonely pyramid from the ocean depths about three hundred meters from the beach.
With every crashing wave, it was thoroughly washed from both sides. The thunderous echo reached our ears all the way on the beach. In some instances, the water flew completely over the island. In recent days, we frequently watched locals paddle out on their smaller boards to ride the waves behind the island.
Drained of their power, the waves continued their roll over the depths toward us. They gathered new strength to rise once again over the shallow bottom (sharp reefs) about seventy meters away.
Almost powerless after this second break, the water current pushed the white saltwater foam under the blue sky, continuing from behind the break toward us. After a while, the white saltwater foam dissipated, leaving us looking only at the blue ocean and the clear blue sky. It takes a while for the current to cross the final seventy meters and reach the beach where we were.
Once Mischko was dry, she asked me to rub sunscreen on her again.
Shortly after, she lay back down on her towel. Since there didn’t seem to be much wind out there and I was still sitting next to her, she grabbed my sail and covered her body. What good is my sail doing there, crossed my mind.
I stayed seated, staring straight ahead, watching the waves crash against the lava rocks beneath the houses to my right. In my mind, I pictured a scenario: I wouldn’t want to be caught between those waves and the cliffs. Fantastic, what a natural spectacle here in paradise, every single day; my thoughts briefly drifted back to Berlin.
There’s a twelve-hour difference. Midnight; Berliners had crawled into bed. I didn’t want to know how cold it was there right now. I let the sun shine on my back, unable to get enough of what was happening on the black rocks beneath the houses.
Look closely, Adam, I thought in that moment. When you leave the island and are back in Berlin, it’s over, and probably forever. You’ll never come to Hawaii again. Then I looked straight ahead again; the white caps on the blue water on the horizon reminded me of a flock of sheep.
When I had seen enough of the ocean, I looked down at what was happening right at my feet. After the white foam retreated, the entire beach crackled. In some spots, the fine sand bulged up, and small crabs constantly crawled out of these mounds.
Their biggest enemies are the birds, which also feed on the plankton. If the crabs aren’t careful enough, they can easily end up in a long beak.
Before submarines surface, they push a long tube above the water’s surface to check if any enemies are nearby, or to locate them. These small crabs do the exact same thing while buried under the sand, using their eyes.
These small crabs have eyes that are thick and large, like a piece of spaghetti about a centimeter long. This centimeter length grew to twice the height of their bodies. Large eyes were clearly visible at the tips.
After the wave recedes, crackling leftover saltwater foam remains on the fine sand. A few seconds later, small sand mounds form in multiple places beneath the crackling saltwater foam. At these mounds, I could see two small eyes carefully creeping upward just seconds later, looking around for potential predators.
If no bird is nearby, these crabs pop out of the open sand mound and sprint across the entire beach until the next wave wipes them off the sand. Since they disappear under the sand every single time, it means that a massive amount of sand streams from the ocean onto the beach with every wave that hits the shore. We feel this too every time we get out of the water; our swimwear is always full of sand.
Hence the shower behind us. I had never seen this species of crab in Europe. Like the crabs, the birds continuously sprint across the beach at high speed until the next wave drives them away. While the birds fly up after a new wave crashes behind us and land on the grass, the crabs disappear beneath the new wave into the white saltwater foam. And so it goes, all day long on the beach here on the northeast side of the island.
CHAPTER IV
After a while, I decided to lie down, though I felt somehow uncomfortable. Looked over at Mischko, motionless beneath the pink sail. She was asleep. Personally, I have never been able to fall asleep anywhere on a beach. In this heat, I wouldn’t even fall asleep if someone put a bed right here for me. I had to grin, looking at her. She had me, her guard dog, making sure nothing happened to her.
Perhaps it was my cautious nature, but no matter where I was, I paid attention to who was near us. You could tell from their faces who you could trust. Some looked like they made you feel uneasy if they were nearby. That’s why we always looked for vast beaches where we felt alone and safe. Today, just like the previous days, we were completely alone here. Actually, I could close my eyes, I thought.
Our gear couldn’t be stolen. The Adidas bag with our valuables was right under Mischko’s head.
I pondered. It’s actually safe here. The three houses behind us on the right weren’t far away. Besides, there were numerous windows up on the cliffs, from which anyone could see everything happening on the beach.
If I were going to commit a robbery, I wouldn’t try it here. With that thought, I laid on my back after all. My sunglasses protected my closed eyes from the strongest sun rays. I genuinely tried to sleep.
Minutes passed… The waves were making such a racket that doing anything more than dozing was impossible. I couldn’t fall asleep. Kept dozing.
Suddenly, I felt something on my stomach. Opened my eyes. Since my feet were slightly lower, I watched a bead of sweat make its way toward my belly button.
Closed my eyes again. Minute by minute, beads of sweat flowed in multiple tracks in different directions. A few seconds later, with my eyes still closed, I felt my hand fly through the air without my command.
Smack!!!! And landed on my stomach.
The fly that had just been admiring the mixture of sunscreen and my sweat had stung me, beating me to the punch by a fraction of a second. Eyes closed again. It didn’t take long before I felt something on my stomach again. The next miss.
This time, at least she didn’t have time to sting me. With open eyes, I lay in wait for her next attempt.
On her subsequent attempt, she realized I wasn’t going to let her land on me and decided to go for Mischko under the sail instead. While Mischko slept, she felt it and automatically swatted it away with her hand. This fly was persistent. After Mischko swatted her away again, she flew over to dear old Adam, who was sitting up, annoyed, lying in wait for her.
Booooom!!!!
While she was still in mid-air, before she even landed on Adam’s skin, she took a flip-flop straight to the dome.
She came from the east, and I sent her right back east with the flip-flop. She was KO’d. I watched her lie motionless for a few seconds; then came a slight movement. From the pain on the hot sand, she rolled around, trying to get back on her feet. Before she regained full consciousness, I stood up and put her out of her misery.
It wasn’t me, it was the flip-flop that flattened her. Since I couldn’t sleep, I stayed seated, looking toward the horizon. Something had changed since I last looked.
The pipelines rolling onto the island weren’t as clean or as large anymore. If this left side hadn’t been overgrown with large trees, the west wind could blow directly into the bay. I imagined what was happening out there.
The wind from the west must have picked up, as the current and the spray were flying strongly to the east. My stomach slowly started to tingle, and I was getting restless. Mischko was lying so peacefully under the sail, I couldn’t do that to her.
Besides, my wetsuit was still in the white bag Mischko was lying on. A while later, I heard some voices behind us on the grass. Looking over my shoulder, I saw a group of Japanese tourists. They were happy, speaking quite loudly, taking photos from the grass behind our backs.
They admired the bay, walked down onto the sand not far from us, and waited for a wave to break so they could take a photo with it. As soon as their feet got wet, they giggled loudly, rejoicing like little kids.
They were short, but old. I heard Mischko mumbling; they had woken her up. While some of them devoured our board with their eyes, Mischko slowly came to. “What’s going on here?”
She saw the scattered group of Asians not far from us.
“How long was I asleep?” She always asks that question when she wakes up.
“Quite a while,” I said. We went for another swim. During that time, the Asians disappeared. I grabbed my wetsuit from the bag and put it on.
“How do I look?” I grinned. “Do I look like a real Hawaiian?”
“I don’t know, your belly is too small for a Hawaiian,” she replied. “But you look like a windsurfer.”
“At least that’s something.” “Now I look even sharper,” I said, putting the sun hat on my head.
“Don’t lose it, or you’ll get sunstroke,” she warned.
It was a simple hat I had picked up in Honolulu for two dollars. I figured I had paid almost two dollars too much, because it looked so cheap, like it came from China.
If I had bought this sun protection hat here on the North Shore, I probably could have gotten it for fifty cents.
You could easily get them for a dollar elsewhere too. I checked my harness lines on both sides of the boom once more, hooked in to test if they were in the correct position. In the meantime, Mischko got up and walked to the trunk where our cooler was. She grabbed a few cold cans of Hawaiian soda from it. When she returned, we sat down again and drank together.
“Imagine this was alcohol,” I said.
“You wouldn’t notice a thing in the waves, it rocks out there anyway,” she replied.
“I’d drown,” I said.
“You wouldn’t drown because you’ve already drank it,” she joked.
I grinned in agreement, slipping two cans into the back pocket of my harness. If I got thirsty out on the open ocean, I’d have some caramel for sugar, saving me a trip back to the beach.
I’d just sit on the board, look toward the shore at Mischko, pull the cans out of the pocket, and quench my thirst.
“Be careful, don’t let anything bite you out there,” she warned.
I knew exactly what she meant and kept my thoughts to myself. That there are sharks out there—I tried never to think about that.
“I’m heading out before you scare me any more.” We both grinned, and I leaned down to give her a goodbye kiss. So far, I had always returned, so what the hell. That thought crossed my mind.
I was definitely a bit nervous and tense. We had been here a few times, but today was the first time I actually had good wind. The previous days, I hadn’t surfed here, but the sail had been rigged. Because it was my first time getting to windsurf here, I was a bit nervous.
Internally, I hoped I’d have enough wind out there. Being the only one out there, I knew I was completely on my own. For Mischko, having peace and quiet on vacation was important, and she had that today—the beach all to herself.
I need the exact opposite. Action!
With the gear in hand, I took a few steps and reached the white foam currently spreading across the entire beach. I waded knee-deep into the water, step by step, holding the board and sail over my head. At the first opportunity after a wave broke, I dropped the gear onto the water’s surface. Meanwhile, I kept the mast in my right hand so I could push the board against the next incoming wave, ensuring I wouldn’t end up under the wave and the gear.
The wave came shortly after, and I pushed the board over it to the other side. The next second… Splash!!!! At that moment, I felt the wave slam against my tense abdominal muscles, as if someone had slapped me from my belly button to my face with a giant hand.
The white foam flew over my entire body, landing behind my back. In the next second, I heard the loud crash on the beach behind me as the wave flattened out.
With my eyes still closed, I maintained a firm grip on the mast, feeling the saltwater foam fizzing across my entire face. Once I opened my eyes, I took a few steps forward, feeling the next wave push me only slightly backward.
I had made it through the break zone. Since I had a west wind blowing parallel to the beach toward the cliffs on my right, I had a good starting position. With good wind, I’d sail straight out, making it easy to come back. That was my logical thought process. The next moment, I looked behind me, grabbed lower on the mast to reach the boom. Then a quick glance back at Mischko to say goodbye.
“See you later alligator,” I tried my hand at English.
“In a while crocodile,” she replied.
She said something else, but I couldn’t understand or hear it over the constant crashing of the waves. Standing waist-deep in the cold water, I had to try something I had never done before. The depth was neither good for a water start nor a beach start. I had to try something new. A start that didn’t exist in surf theory. A start right between those two.
From now on, I’ll call it the “Waterbeachstart.” Well, this is off to a good start. Barely in the water, and I’m already learning something new. The wind was at my back, both hands on the boom, the sail above my head. Slowly, I lifted my left foot onto the edge of the board near the mast, right in front of my face, while my right back foot still stood on the sand underwater.
To get more pressure in the sail, I lifted it slightly higher into the sky above my head. This gave the wind more surface area to attack, pulling the sail away from my body into the void, while the mast tip pointed increasingly toward the sky. Because I held the boom in my hands, my arms automatically extended. Like an invisible force, the power of the wind pulled my entire weight up out of the water, shifting all my weight onto my left leg, while my right foot left the sand and swam upward behind the now slowly gliding board. In the next two to three seconds, my right foot swam up from the depths and shortly after landed on the board as well.
After my self-proclaimed first successful “Waterbeachstart,” my sinker board quickly began to plane, and I turned my head back. In my ears, I heard the hiss of the water under the board behind me at the tail. A beautiful sight before my eyes: my brand-new pink board skimming over the turquoise-green water.
The white wake of bubbling saltwater foam trailing me on the turquoise-green surface made it look like I was riding a jet ski. I lifted my head from the water’s surface and looked at Mischko. She smiled and waved; I waved back, then happily turned my head forward, a smile on my face. Already in the second third of the bay, the colors on the water’s surface shifted from turquoise green to black serpentine lines ahead of me.
Dark, pitch-black lava rocks were clearly visible and unevenly distributed ahead of me. These black, razor-sharp reefs rose in various sizes beneath the turquoise-green surface in the middle of the white sand, scattered erratically like a black flock of sheep in a meadow. As I surfed, sometimes these black lava rocks were right under my board, completely obliterating the turquoise-green color beneath me. I could clearly see that the water in front of and beneath my board was quite shallow, and then two or three meters later, I was suddenly surfing over turquoise-green water again, with only sand visible beneath the board and the water running deep. After a few meters of surfing over the turquoise-green surface, everything ahead suddenly turned pitch black again from the razor-sharp lava rocks.
These two colors alternated for several seconds. The closer I got to the break zone, the denser the razor-sharp reefs became. On the water’s surface ahead of me, just before the break zone, the white, bubbling saltwater bubbles from the previous wave sizzled and popped under the sun’s rays. As these sizzling bubbles burst, thousands of snow-white saltwater pearls glittered and reflected on the bubbling white surface under the midday sun. This changing bottom—turquoise green, then a one-meter black lava rock, then turquoise green again, then black—reminded me of a tiger’s striped coat at that moment.
These black lava rocks lurked quite shallow beneath my expensive board in several places, endangering my fin. After a few evasive maneuvers—detours, you might call them on the road—to avoid damaging the fin, the board slowed down. Since the bubbling white spray from the break ahead of me moved toward the beach with the current, it increasingly obscured the black lava rocks in my path. Beneath the bubbling white saltwater foam, I could see absolutely nothing at the moment, putting me at risk of surfing my fin onto a reef and damaging both it and my board.
CHAPTER XIV
Standing in the middle of the white saltwater foam, almost sixty meters away from Mischko, I found myself just shy of the run-out zone where the waves broke for a second time. Before the water current from a newly formed, meter-high wave of saltwater foam could gather momentum and surge toward the beach with renewed force, I paused. As this newly formed, meter-high wave of bubbling saltwater foam moved toward me in this second break zone, countless glittering saltwater crystals sparkled like snow-white pearls under the intense midday sun. The sizzling white bubbles popped, and the bubbling water lost its power. While my board glided slowly through the saltwater foam, my bare feet only faintly felt the tingle of the cold white foam.
Carried by the water current toward the beach, this white foam gradually dispersed, and the turquoise-green water surface re-emerged behind me.
Just to avoid dismounting, I took a risk in that moment. I decided to glide even more slowly into the roaring break zone ahead of me, navigating through the white spray among thousands of glittering snow-white pearls. I kept my eyes fixed on the next incoming wave, which was still rearing up not far ahead. While fully concentrated, asking myself if I would manage to cross it before it broke, I was suddenly startled by a loud crack, reminiscent of a severe thunderstorm following a lightning strike. Startled, my shoulders twitched, and in sheer panic, I whipped my head around, looking west toward where the crack had originated.
This wave, about two to three meters high and ten meters away to the north, was moving toward me. It was still rearing up, looking like a long, dark blue, towering wall of water behind my back. It had reached the shallowest part of the bottom to the west and had just begun to pitch forward and break.
What a racket, I thought in that moment.
As the wave—this dark blue, nearly three-meter-high wall of water—continuously pitched forward behind me, the multi-ton wall of water crashed down from its height onto the smooth sea surface. In my ears, it sounded like a prolonged, relentless clap of thunder during the heaviest of thunderstorms.
On the beach, this sound was merely a continuous, soft rush of water.
Even though the sun beat down hotly on my head from the right, despite my sun hat, the highest point of the wave behind my back was being blown away by the wind. White water spray flew off the top of the wave toward me. The intense sun rays pierced through this white mist, creating rainbow colors that flew through the air from the west toward me over the dark blue wall of water. At the very top, beneath the water spray and rainbows, at the thinnest part of the wave where the water was almost transparent, countless colors glittered.
I turned my head back to the north, where the wave was bearing down on me.
Amidst this deafening crash in my ears, I looked across the foamy, churning white water surface separating me from the menacing incoming wave. On this foamy, churning white surface, countless snow-white saltwater crystals sparkled like pearls under the sun’s rays. The churning saltwater foam hissed, sizzled, and crackled.
From the corner of my eye behind me, against the backdrop of this dark blue wall of water and above the white saltwater spray blown toward me by the west wind, I saw a bright, clear blue sky stretching to the horizon ahead. Being the only one out here amidst this loud spectacle, witnessing these two magnificent shades of blue, was a true fascination of nature.
The sun reflected in the churning white foam beneath my bare feet onto the glossy yellow front half of my fiberglass board, coated with sugar crystals and sealed with clear lacquer. Right in the middle of this loud, rushing, foamy, snow-white Hawaiian momentum, under a clear blue sky, with the thunderous, stormy sound in my ears from the wave behind me continuously breaking forward, and surrounded by the hissing, crackling, and sizzling white saltwater foam all around me—a distinct, black, jagged shape suddenly appeared and sparkled six meters in front of me.
In the midst of this white spray ahead of me, it looked like a black barrier slowly rising above the churning white water surface. It grew longer by the second, stretching parallel to the wave until it stood twenty centimeters above the white saltwater foam. I had never seen such a beautiful, clear, sparkling black color. The sparkle likely resulted from the jagged black shape being continuously and freshly washed by the waves and saltwater. On top of the black barrier ahead of me, the sun reflected off the remaining saltwater bubbles, which sizzled, crackled, and popped.
In a fraction of a second, I realized I was surfing directly onto razor-sharp lava rocks protruding above the water surface. This was something I couldn’t discern from the beach, seventy meters away.
“Noooo!” I screamed aloud and automatically jumped off the board in the direction of the wind, still clutching the boom in my right hand. I immediately reached for the board with my left hand, knowing the wave would break not far from me in the next few seconds.
After unexpectedly touching the razor-sharp black bottom with the bare soles of my feet, it took me several seconds to find solid footing. Meanwhile, the continuous echo of the thundering wave behind my back grew unusually louder in my ears. The wave was about four meters away. My gear was between me and the wave—something surf theory explicitly tells you never to do, because in the next few seconds, the wave would hurl the board at me with full force. In the very second the thunderous echo reached its peak in my ears, I saw the blue wall of water to my left pitch forward. The wind swept the white water spray through the air. The rainbow colors had never been so close or so clear to me as they were in that instant. The wave directly in front of me also pitched forward.
In that same second, the dark blue wall of water flew in a massive arc from above onto the foamy water surface right in front of me. “Boooooom!”
The wave flattened completely over the board, which I was barely able to hold in front of me.
“Kiss my ass!!” I screamed loudly. At least the board didn’t hit me in the head, the thought crossed my mind.
My eyes were full of saltwater, and my eyelashes snapped shut automatically in a fraction of a second. While I stood there cursing with my eyes closed, the white foam rushed toward me at chest height. Almost instantly, the white spray slammed against my chest, splashing even more water squarely into my face. With my eyes closed, I felt the wave’s current pressing the board and sail against me. To avoid being crushed by my gear, I was forced to stumble backward involuntarily several steps, eyes closed, with my back to the beach.
During those seconds, as I was pushed backward for several steps with my eyes closed and my back to the shore, my board and sail were caught in the middle of the churning, hissing, and rushing white foam. I was terrified, fearing that the wave had forced the board underwater against the reefs, scratching or even breaking it.
Mischko couldn’t possibly know what was happening here. I had anticipated everything: getting a cramp in the ocean, a broken mast, a broken boom, getting thirsty, swallowing saltwater if I fell in—I had expected it all. But I never imagined I’d be jumping off the board before I even made it out of the bay.
My gray cells are wide awake; that’s why I haven’t seen a single local windsurfer at this spot to this day. It’s because of this reef barrier in front of me. While the local windsurfers know exactly where to enter the ocean with a board, here I am, letting the very first wave wash over me. When I opened my eyes, the tingling saltwater drops were still flowing from my forehead over my eyelashes and down my face. Gripping my gear tightly with both hands, I stared across the hissing, churning white water surface at the spot where the black reef had been just moments ago.
The saltwater in my eyes remained uncomfortable and stung. I had to squeeze my eyes shut repeatedly to force the unpleasant salt out. When I finally got my eyes open again, what a contrast appeared before me. The sun’s rays beat down on my head against the backdrop of a clear blue sky. I couldn’t see the distinct black reef at the moment because the wave had kicked up a massive amount of water, covering the reef in white foam. The cold, white saltwater foam bubbles crackled, sizzled, and popped loudly right before my eyes on the foamy surface all around me.
I felt like I was back home in Berlin, sitting in a bathtub full of bubble bath.
The thunderous echo of the breaking wave that had hit me a few seconds ago continued unabated, slowly moving away toward the east. I hadn’t fully realized how hard I had landed barefoot underwater or whether I was injured. Jumping off the board and instinctively bracing myself immediately on the board with my free hand, and feeling no pain under the soles of my feet, it seemed I had landed softer than I could have. I was almost seventy meters from shore, standing barefoot in knee-deep water on razor-sharp lava rocks.
Typical for the island. While trying to return to normalcy from the shock, my eyes continued to stare across the white saltwater foam at the spot where the razor-sharp reef had vanished under the spray. Although the wave that had hit my gear continued its break to my right and the thunderous echo should have been fading, I couldn’t comprehend what was happening around me or why the noise in my ears was getting louder.
Standing barefoot in knee-deep water on razor-sharp reefs, surrounded by bubbling white spray, I was furious, utterly confused, and glaring sourly above the churning foam. The sizzling white saltwater bubbles crackled and popped, the white saltwater crystals glittering everywhere around me like white pearls in the blazing sun. Then, I saw the next blue wall of water about eight meters away. This incoming wave, heading straight for me, was nearly two meters high. As the noise intensified, I instinctively turned my head left toward the west. Only then did it dawn on me why the sound in my ears was getting louder instead of softer.
This blue wall of water—the next wave, which had reared up at least two meters high in front of me—had already begun to break in the exact same spot as the first wave and was halfway toward me. The west wind continuously swept the white water spray over the crest of the wave in my direction. As the sun’s rays pierced through the waves and water spray from above, and the wind blew from the west, clear rainbow colors became increasingly distinct before my eyes, the wind pushing the spray through the air toward me.
I hadn’t even fully recovered from hitting the board during the first wave and the initial shock. I had just jumped into the water, watching the wave smash my board and pin it underwater against the reefs, and now I was staring at the next thundering wave threatening me. At that moment, I snapped my head back to the north, where the two-meter wave was approaching. It was even closer now, threatening to smash me in two to three seconds.
In those fleeting seconds, I quickly grabbed the foot strap with my left hand and tried to pull the sail out of the water in time with my right hand! Booooooom! It was too late.
The second wave crashed onto the board and my sail with even greater force. My start couldn’t have been more disastrous. It broke my heart to see a wave pin my brand new, expensive fiberglass board—yellow, pink, and black—underwater against the razor-sharp reefs again, likely tearing my sail in the process.
The spray hit my eyebrows instantly. I squeezed them shut automatically, and just like with the first wave, I had saltwater in my eyes again.
What am I doing here? crossed my mind. I was even more furious now. Because my sail and board were caught under the white saltwater foam between me and the wave, I allowed the second wave to push me backward involuntarily to avoid being crushed by the strong current dragging my gear. With saltwater in my closed eyes and my back to the beach, I felt the razor-sharp reefs scrape the bare soles of my feet with every step backward. These backward steps were necessary; otherwise, the next wave would have been even more menacing.
At some point between the reefs and the wave, I figured my board wouldn’t be able to withstand the constant pounding. If the board breaks, I might as well get out, I thought. With my final step backward, the relentless pressure from the water current caused me to slip off the rock where I had briefly found solid footing, tumbling into a hole. I was now involuntarily submerged chest-deep. Faced with the next wave and the next surge of current in the midst of this white spray, I was powerless; I couldn’t take any more steps backward. “Kiss my ass!” I cursed for the third time in less than a minute.
Hanging in the depths, gripping my gear with both hands, eyes and mouth shut tightly, one foot touched the sand while the other felt the pressure of the rocks against my calf. Under a clear blue sky, I felt the wind caress my face, pushing the small saltwater bubbles aside, while the white saltwater foam tingled across my entire face. I barely managed to keep my face above the white spray so I could finally open my eyes.
Being submerged up to my head in the white, glittering saltwater foam, the noise was deafening—rushing, bubbling, sizzling, crackling, and hissing right in my ears.
I kept trying to squeeze my eyelashes together tightly to force the last tingling, stinging drops of saltwater out of my eyes. When I finally managed to wipe the last drops away with my free hand, I turned around a second later and looked desperately toward Mischko.
She sat there, looking puzzled, having no idea what was happening, what I was doing, or how much I was struggling. What a lucky guy I am, I thought again. While the thunderous echo from my right side near the cliffs hadn’t even faded, the noise in my ears grew louder and louder again. Now, without even looking, I knew exactly why it was getting louder as I stared desperately at Mischko. The next wave had begun to break at the shallowest point to the west; it would soon crash behind me, and the current would try to push me even further toward the beach from my hole.
I turned my head to the right, toward the west.
CHAPTER V
The waves came in sets, six-packs. The first wave begins to break at the shallowest point underwater in the west, continuing until it finally dies out on the rocks in the east, almost twenty seconds later.
This continuous crashing of waves onto the water’s surface is incredibly loud right from the start, at the very first pitch forward. It’s as loud as the onset of thunder after a close lightning strike in the heaviest thunderstorm. Then it gets louder and louder by the second until the wave breaks right in front of me. That’s when it’s loudest. The long wave then continues its break, slowly moving away from me. As the break moves further away, the thunder in my ears gradually fades. Before it completely dies out, the next wave is already halfway to me, and this repeats until the wave set is over. Then there’s a calm phase of up to half a minute before it all starts over again.
Since this natural spectacle repeats itself endlessly, it sounds almost like a never-ending melody played by the ocean’s orchestra.
Standing in the middle of this open stage, I am the sole spectator here, surrounded by sizzling snow-white saltwater foam and glittering saltwater pearls at eye level under the blue sky.
With my vision clear and the stinging saltwater in my eyes subsiding, I peacefully observed the musical performance, the next wave, which likely wouldn’t hit me with as much force since I had been pushed several meters back into the neck-deep hole by the last one.
Did I surf out here just to watch how the waves break? crossed my mind… No! Not like this, I thought. I looked toward the cliffs to see if there was any possibility of getting out there, since I wasn’t far from them.
The danger was too great; the waves raged near the cliffs, smashing powerfully against the black rocks. That would be too reckless, flashed through my mind instantly, and I immediately dismissed the idea. I turned my head west, observing the spot where the waves started to break for a while. About twenty meters behind that, the water was almost smooth. Where the wave didn’t break and the water was smooth, the bottom must be deeper. I needed to get behind the spot where the wave started breaking, but how?
But how? Walk? Paddle? Surfing against the wind was impossible. Should I walk twenty to thirty meters across these razor-sharp reefs? Or was it even forty meters? Even though it would be easier to surf back to the beach, tell Mischko it was impossible to surf out here, pull the board out of the water, carry my gear west along the beach, and then surf out—I decided on the wrong approach: walking.
One reason I couldn’t think clearly at that moment was that I still hadn’t processed the shock.
Desperate, I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t even surfed halfway out of the bay before I was already reduced to pushing or pulling my gear. Like a beginner! Having chosen the more difficult option of walking the entire distance left, against the wind, across the reefs to where I suspected deeper water, I decided to take a moment to observe the natural spectacle unfolding before me.
Lost in thought, I remained standing chest-deep in the water. I let the subsequent current and spray gently push me backward, staying within the hole. I turned toward the beach.
A different perspective from the water. Like a scene from the most beautiful vacation photos. A green oasis against the turquoise-green ocean under a clear blue sky. Looking from the ocean, my gaze fell on the houses on the cliffs to the far left, marking the northeasternmost point of the island. Not a soul in sight. I had no idea if someone was watching me from one of those houses at that moment because I hadn’t seen anyone up on the cliffs.
In that moment, I admired the people living in those unseen houses. How incredibly beautiful they have it here. In slow motion, my eyes swept from one house to the next, trying to spot someone—either at a window or on the property among the palm trees in their adjacent gardens. Nothing.
All I saw was the blue sky, the wooden houses, and the lush green vegetation surrounding them. Seven or eight meters below the houses, black lava rocks provided a solid foundation for these wooden structures. I turned my head from the northeastern tip across the roofs in the east, moving west to where the last house stood on the cliffs. Reaching the end of the cliffs, I looked down over the black lava rocks to the point where the bay began.
A sandy beach… of the finest quality… completely empty… I looked past the only three houses located south behind the beach. In the background behind these houses, the road was hidden, but in the distance, wildly overgrown mountain peaks and the blue sky were visible.
Looking back down and focusing on the third and final house here on the beach, my thoughts returned to Mischko. She sat on her towel, at least thirty meters from the house, looking at me questioningly, wondering why I was just standing in the water. Behind her, I only saw the grass, with the road behind it barely discernible.
The large trees behind the road, located between the road and the college area, were so tall their tops blocked the view of the white Mormon temple situated on the hill behind the college.
Over the green mountain where this white temple sat, a few fluffy clouds drifted eastward under a clear blue sky. Looking higher, the midday sun glared directly into my eyes; it seemed to have reached its peak. While observing all this, the thought crossed my mind: This island truly deserves the name “Paradise.” I had to think of Berlin again. In that moment, I didn’t regret a single Mark I had spent on this expensive vacation, even if it were just for this one instant. While contemplating my costly trip, I waved to Mischko. She seemed to have seen me and waved back.
I continued to observe the trees to Mischko’s left. This forest stretched tightly along the beach until it reached a curve resembling an Australian boomerang, where the beach extended northward into the ocean, ending at the black lava rocks of Malekahana Beach.
After making a full panoramic sweep, turning 360 degrees on my axis, I still hadn’t had enough. I wanted to keep watching the wave sets.
They arrived at regular intervals, always in that same six-pack.
I tracked the waves from their inception when they were far out in their initial build-up phase. On the smooth water surface, only minimal signs of a slight unevenness were initially visible. I call these signs small water bulges building up parallel to the beach, between the small island and the reef in front of me.
Where the first small unevenness appeared on the sea surface, you could guess that the bottom was beginning to shallow out right at that spot. After the last volcanic eruption, the lava flows had reached their furthest point here, where the first minor signs of water unevenness were visible.
The closer the small water bulges (minor signs of a wave on the smooth surface) got, and the higher the water hump rose, the more evident it became that the bottom was getting shallower and the wave simultaneously larger.
These initially small water bulges then turned into long water humps, which we call waves. Because these fairly long waves were in motion before my eyes, the closer they got to me, the higher they appeared. This towering, moving dark blue mass of water looked to me like a threatening, moving dark blue wall of water about to crash down on me at any moment.
The shallower the bottom, the faster the current pushed the dark blue wall of water toward me, and the higher the wave grew. After the wave had built momentum and reached its peak, the highest point of the wave curled forward, threatening to swallow me. Because I had enough distance at the moment, the situation only looked threatening.
The strong west wind blew continuously over the highest and thinnest part of the wave, sweeping it off like a broom.
From this wind-swept tip of the wave, snow-white saltwater dust formed, flying through the air to the east. The sun’s rays pierced through these feather-light, transparent, glittering saltwater crystals—this white water dust flying through the air at breakneck speed with the wind—and much like with dark clouds and rain when the sun shines, I continuously saw glittering, moving rainbow colors right in front of me.
Beneath the flying, snow-white, glittering saltwater dust and the rainbow colors, the wave was almost transparent. Therefore, the strong sun rays penetrating this thin layer of water also made the same glittering rainbow colors visible in the upper part of the wave. The turquoise-green color stood out the most.
Below the uppermost, first, almost transparent, glittering, multicolored third of the wave, the water began to turn slightly light blue, while the final, lowest third appeared quite dark blue to me.
With every wave break, the wave curled far forward, forming a tube; it looked almost like a tunnel. When the entire mass of water with all its weight crashed from above onto the almost smooth water surface, there was always a veritable explosion.
“Wwooooooooooo!!!!” Ever since the first crack and roar from my left in the west, when the wave first broke, my eardrums vibrated. The closer the wave rolled toward me from the north, the stronger the vibration in my ears became. The thunder and the roar from my left grew louder and louder by the second; the vibration could even be felt under my bare feet on the reefs. With its two-meter height, the wave broke right in front of me at a distance of six meters onto the razor-sharp reefs, covering them completely. The wave continued breaking continuously to my right. Since the wind was blowing from the west, and the wave, after breaking in front of me, continued to break eastward from my perspective and slowly moved away from me, the loud thunder and vibration in my ears and under my feet gradually subsided, and the wave grew quieter.
I couldn’t see what was happening here from the beach. It’s like an interplay between the reef and the waves. After the wave had washed these reefs with its white saltwater foam and the current carrying the white spray passed me by, those black, scrubbed-clean, glittering reefs repeatedly emerged above the snow-white water surface, reflecting their sleek black sparkle directly into my eyes.
Because I was currently clinging to the board with both hands, neck-deep in the water in a hole, the snow-white saltwater foam boiled and churned continuously right before my eyes, at eye level. The churning white saltwater foam in front of my eyes roared, tingled, sizzled, crackled, and hissed loudly and clearly in my ears, all beneath a clear blue sky here in paradise.
Magnificent! I was simply thrilled.
I had never observed and seen the waves from this fish-eye perspective before. In the past, when I caught waves, I surfed them up or rode them down standing on the board.
But how waves are formed, how incredibly beautiful individual waves are, and the varied glittering colors these waves possess—that became clear to me for the very first time in that moment. The waves here in Hawaii truly are something special; out here, they are much clearer and cleaner than at the beach where the bottom is sandy.
After about a ten-minute break, I decided to crawl out of the hole and walk west, where the waves weren’t breaking. I suspected that where the water was smooth, behind the break zone in the west, the water was likely deeper.
Because my ears had accustomed themselves to the thunderous echo over the past ten minutes, I now took it for granted and paid it no further attention.
Walking through the white, tingling saltwater foam in knee-deep water, I focused entirely on my steps and the individual rocks. With every step beneath the white spray, I first felt each reef under the sensitive bare soles of my feet; only when I was sure I wouldn’t tear the skin underneath did I slowly shift my weight onto my front foot.
These reefs, which I couldn’t see in the white foam beneath the soles of my feet, were constantly perplexing. Therefore, this path westward seemed to me like an unread book. While I read a book with my eyes, at this moment, every step forward felt like an unread line of text. While feeling the stone with the sole of my foot, I felt the stone; in other words, I read the stone with the sole of my foot. The sole of my foot told me how large the stone was, whether there was a depression or a hole in front of me, if my foot was brushing against the side of a razor-sharp reef, how uneven and how sharp the next reef was, and whether it was possible to put my full weight on it or not. The sole of my foot transmitted all this to my brain.
Sometimes I felt a large stone, sometimes a small one; sometimes, to my surprise, they were suddenly so smooth and slippery that the slight saltwater current frequently caused me to slip and lose my balance, falling with my entire weight onto the board and forcing me to brace myself with both hands. Each time, my board sank up to fifteen centimeters beneath the white saltwater foam in front of me, while my five-square-meter pink sail floated on the churning white spray. Because the white foam was up to my knees, every time I pushed the board down under the white, roaring, churning foam with my entire weight, I was well aware that I could scratch or break my board.
With every step forward, with every grope or mere touch of the reef beneath the bare soles of my feet, I felt as if I were stepping on thousands of tiny needles every single time.
When I was sure I could step onto the needle-like reef beneath my soles without injuring myself, I fully shifted my weight forward, simultaneously holding my mast with only one hand. If the pain under the soles of my feet became too intense, I would unexpectedly and involuntarily buckle my knee, automatically bracing myself on the board with my hand again. Also, the current frequently forced me to take an uncontrolled next step forward, compelling me to fully brace my weight on the board once more. Sometimes I took a step backward toward the beach, sometimes toward the surf, sometimes a step to the side.
Consequently, I often landed uncontrollably in a hole, submerged up to my head in water. My feet would dangle over the abyss, forcing me to swim. Sometimes I slipped into a hole up to my belly button.
Paddling through the white foam was impossible here; I wouldn’t have made any headway at all. After all, I still had the sail in my hand. I was too heavy for the board, which would immediately sink at least fifteen centimeters beneath the white foam under me. The white water in front of me was simply too shallow.
I should have had a clear head at that moment. It would have been so easy to surf to the beach and back.
No, I was too proud or stubborn and behaved like a beginner.
Actually, in that moment, I was a beginner. It was my first time out in the ocean in this bay, and I finally had decent wind. The days before, we had hopped from beach to beach in search of wind. When there was no wind, we stayed at the beach to swim.
Right in the middle of this white, roaring spray, I often thought of the bathtub at home in Berlin, filled with bubble bath. As I walked, the sun constantly reflected on the glittering, sizzling saltwater crystals on the white surface.
“My God, what did I do to deserve this?” I talked loudly to myself, almost like a madman.
After a while, I turned toward the beach to see how far I had walked. It seemed as if I had covered half the distance. Pondering slightly, I continued walking. Meanwhile, I didn’t notice that I hadn’t been walking parallel to the break zone. I had been entirely focused on the bottom, making sure I didn’t tear the soles of my feet or injure my legs.
It was only when the wave finally broke, and I found myself hanging from the board with both hands, my legs dangling between rocks in a large hole again, that I realized I had drifted off course.
I had probably drifted off course due to the constant slipping and stumbling. I found myself close to the break zone again.
Because I was near the break zone at that moment, clutching my gear desperately as I slipped into the hole, gasping for breath, the white, salty spray easily entered my mouth. At the same time, my board and pink sail were covered in white foam. I was cursing again.
I felt the power of the wave; my hands were cramped and stretching. The wave pressed my hip against the reef.
“Kiss my ass!!!” “What am I doing here!” I was cursing loudly again. I tried to get out of the hole, but during the strong current, I was powerless and remained stuck in the hole, my hip pressed against the rocks. In that moment, I was glad I had a windsurfing suit with long legs; my arms were bare from the shoulders down. Once the current passed, I seized the opportunity to get out of the hole. When I was almost out, the next moment, standing chest-deep in the white foam, I pulled the sail out of the white foam high above my head. When the white foam flowed off the sail and it became lighter, I held it with one hand. With the other, I pulled the board toward me and positioned the sail so that only the boom rested on the tail.
Now the entire sail was on the board above the water. With my left hand, I held the part of the boom attached to the mast so it wouldn’t slip off the board onto the water’s surface again, and continued walking. I was now positioned between the break zone and the board, trying to move away from the break zone.
In addition to the thundering of the waves, because I was walking west against the wind, I felt and heard the wind howling in my ears. Behind the surf, I could see quite well how the gusts of wind raced at breakneck speed, at irregular intervals, over the swells before the waves reared up. This gave me hope that my efforts wouldn’t be in vain.
For a moment, the howling of the wind suddenly reminded me of winter. Standing atop a mountain peak above a mogul piste. The two of us were completely alone. We were surrounded by snow-covered white fir trees. Due to the snow melting off the firs and freezing again, the trees looked as if they were made of crystal-clear, transparent glass ice.
We observed the heavily laden fir trees for a while, coated only with a thick layer of crystal-clear ice. The green needles were rarely discernible beneath the layer of ice.
With ski goggles over our eyes, a thick scarf around our necks over the ski suit. Light snowflakes fell from the sky, all this half an hour before darkness.
Because we had ventured far from the hotel, it seemed even colder than it was, as we fully expected not to reach the hotel before nightfall. Visibility was fifteen meters. The cold wind howled around our ears then, just as it did in this very moment.
At that moment, thinking about the cold, something clicked in my head.
“Am I stupid?” I asked myself loudly. “What am I doing here?”
Thinking about the ice-covered firs and the ice suddenly gave me a clear head. I grabbed the board, turned the nose of the board toward Mischko sitting on the beach.
My gaze drifted over the cliffs on the hill where the waves crashed beneath the houses, which meant the wind was at my back, as always. I lightly held the tip of the mast in my hand; to get the mast and sail over my head, I had to pull the mast and sail toward me over my head two more times.
Before handing the sail over to the wind, I had to place my left foot on the edge of the board, while my right foot was still deep underwater on the rocks. At the first touch of the sole of my left foot on the edge of the board directly in front of my face, supported by my swimming foot in the depths, I pushed the sail higher above my head so the gust of wind would have more surface area to hit. I felt my entire body moving upward out of the water.
Splash! Back in the water! “Bite me!” I cursed. I hadn’t even managed to surf to the beach.
For the umpteenth time, I was cursing since leaving the beach and struggling out here. I had the bad luck of the gust being too weak. Now I had the sail right on my head, and simultaneously, I heard the thundering of the wave that had just broken behind my back.
Like a poor pig, I surfaced from under the sail out of the white saltwater foam. Everything seemed to be against me. My attempt to surf to the beach had failed.
The white saltwater sizzled and crackled around me at chest height. Whatever, I had to walk again. Now I had to pull the boom out of the water again and place it on the tail so the sail would be clear of the white saltwater foam.
Step by step, like a soldier heavily laden with gear, I struggled forward through the white saltwater foam, heading west.
At that moment, I realized that walking also had a silver lining. I would never have learned how varied the bottom in this bay is if I had surfed out through the surf on the first try. Unfortunately, the black reef barrier had been in my way then.
While these thoughts crossed my mind, I was almost at my goal, the start of where the waves broke. Because the reefs no longer breached the surface, I realized that the bottom behind the start of the breaking waves, where the sea surface was smooth, was indeed deeper. Before I surfed out, I had to check if the soles of my feet had suffered too much. I sat on the wobbly board in the middle of the loud, rushing, tingling white spray; the board immediately sank at least fifteen centimeters beneath the water’s surface.
When I had the first leg on the board, I looked at the sole of my foot.
The sole of my foot was completely raw and red, as if someone had beaten or whipped me. I didn’t find any open wounds or blood. “Shit, that was close,” I thought aloud. My other sole looked the same. “The fin.” Yes, I had to check that too. I slipped off the board and turned it on its edge so I could see the fin. What a sight. Under the clear blue sky, the sun shone, the crackling white bubbles crawled and popped all around the hand holding the board. All the colors on my brand new fiberglass board sparkled in the sun. Pink, black, yellow, light green in the midst of the white, bubbling saltwater foam. The fin was light pink; it was in its box, right where it should be.
Without touching the light pink fiberglass fin, I turned the board from its edge back onto the water’s surface. Because I had walked the last few meters almost chest-deep through fresh, snow-white, rushing, crackling, sizzling saltwater foam, I would have preferred to lie on my stomach on the board and paddle to relieve the soles of my feet. Unfortunately, I was too heavy for my board, so I decided to swim the last ten meters, dragging the gear behind me. After about five minutes, I was finally ready. I turned the nose of the board into the starting position toward the small island, about three hundred meters away from me. When I lifted the mast tip, I saw only fat, dark blue water bulges rolling in my direction. Through my sail window, I looked east again toward the houses.
No one in sight. The gust of wind raced past my ears, a sign that I should try again. Under a clear blue sky, standing chest-deep in blue water, about seventy meters from the beach—no crackling spray around me for the first time in a long while—I attempted the next beach start.
I pulled the mast toward me and gripped the boom with both hands. My head was now squarely under the sail, and the sail was half a meter above the blue sea surface.
Hanging from the boom with both arms extended, I placed the sole of my left foot on the edge of the board directly in front of my face. With my arms half-extended above my head, squarely under the sail, I slightly lifted the mast tip and the sail higher into the sky so the wind would have more surface area to hit. At that moment, the wind pulled the sail upward toward the east. The sail pulled my entire body up from the depths, and automatically, my right foot left the bottom. In that moment, the board started moving and began to plane. While my right foot continuously swam upward from the depths, maintaining balance, I simultaneously shifted my left foot from the depths up to the edge of the board. When the swimming sole reached the water’s surface from the depths, it touched the edge of the board. At the same moment, I pushed the mast tip and the sail even higher toward the sky, away from my head. Only then did the wind fully catch the sail’s surface. In that moment, the wind pushed the sail up toward the sky. Hanging onto the boom with both hands, I felt myself being literally yanked out of the water.
Now that my body was completely out of the water, the board accelerated and finally started planing properly. A quick glance through the sail window at the houses, then over my shoulder back at Mischko.
She spotted my right arm in the air and waved back.
Slight uncertainty over the hump of the incoming, nearly breaking wave forced me to direct my gaze forward. When I crossed the wave and rode down the back of the incoming wave, the smooth, light blue sea surface opened up before me. At that moment, I slipped one leg after the other into the foot straps. “Then I’ll hook into the harness line and lean back slightly against the wind.” Liberated.
“Yüpppyyyyyy!!!!” I screamed loudly.
It had taken a long time… crossed my mind. All the frustration slowly subsided. I had definitely been out for an hour; that’s how long it took before I could finally surf. Having set my sights on the island, I looked through my sail toward the houses again.
It’s the first time in my life I’ve had such a beautiful view. A true paradise… I started daydreaming again.
It must be a wonderful feeling to own a house here. Magnificent.
I watched the waves crash against the black cliffs, so forcefully that the white foam was carried almost all the way up to the houses. Then I turned my head in the direction I was surfing and looked at the light blue sea surface about ten meters ahead of me. How deep is it beneath me?
In that single second when I thought about potential threats from the deep, almost scaring myself, I realized it wasn’t a particularly good thought. So, to distract myself, I looked through my sail window toward the houses again.
While trying to suppress the thought and fear of a threat in the dark depths beneath me by looking at the houses, I suddenly heard a loud noise a meter behind me.
Thoroughly startled and lightning-fast, I turned my head to the right, curiously looking to see what was making such a loud noise behind me. In addition to the thundering of the mammoth waves behind my back and the gusts of wind howling in my ears, I saw and heard my tail hissing behind me, which startled me in that moment. Relieved, I then looked at the white track my board was leaving on the turquoise-green sea surface; it instantly reminded me of the white wake of a jet ski or a Miami Vice speedboat.
I had just made it out of the bay; caught up in my excitement and brief fright, I only now realized how strong the gusts of wind were out here.
If I hadn’t been so mesmerized by the beauty of this island, I probably would have noticed immediately.
Hey… “What is that?” I widened my eyes questioningly. When I sat on the beach, I thought the rocks on our right side, where the houses were built, were the outermost corner of Oahu. From here, where I was at that moment, from my current position, I saw that there was another island in front of the houses, about five meters above the water’s surface.
The locals looking out of their windows from above look directly onto the island. This island prevents even larger waves and more saltwater spray from reaching the houses.
This island in front of the last houses stretches along the coast to the northeast, forming a small, narrow channel.
In the middle of this island, I spotted a giant hole, at least a meter in diameter. After a strong wave impact, the white saltwater spray flies through the hole to the other side of the island.
While the board glided over the smooth sea surface ahead of me, the fin behind me on my right tore the water’s surface open so violently that the water hissed loudly and sprayed high into the air. When I saw this…
“Yüpppyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!” I rejoiced as loudly as a little kid again.
Second by second, the white track behind me grew longer. Lifting my head slightly higher above the water’s surface and the foamy white track, I now saw only a tiny dot on the beach, which could only be Mischko. I waved to her again. Did she see me? Unlikely. I was approaching the small island.
When I cast another quick glance at the houses, I was already beyond this outermost northeast corner of the island, in the open ocean. Not a soul around except Adam. Being alone didn’t bother me; today, this ocean belonged only to me.
At full speed, I set course for the open ocean. I had the sun at my back, a clear blue sky, and a few fluffy clouds above my head. For the moment, I was fascinated by everything—the speed and the light blue water with its gleaming colors beneath my feet on my fiberglass board.
The sea surface ahead of me was light blue; the front half of my board was yellow with light green stars. On the back half beneath my feet, black and burgundy stripes about five centimeters wide were visible.
Ahead of me, traveling at full speed, I constantly crossed smaller and smaller humps, the first phase of wave formation. While I was so fascinated and caught up in the rush of happiness, the increasingly loud thundering behind my back drew my attention.
I turned my head to the left and looked over my shoulders to see what was making so much noise.
Not far behind me, I saw that I was surfing right past this small island at that very moment. The thought of surfing even further behind the small island didn’t cross my mind right then. Just looking at the open ocean, the vast horizon, and realizing that for thousands of miles ahead of me there was nothing but deep water until you hit Alaska—that thought alone scared me. If I started thinking about marine life now, fear would quickly creep in, and the fun would be over.
After turning my head away from the island and directing my gaze forward toward the horizon, I looked out over the endless expanse, which still slightly scared me in that moment. Only the loud crashing of waves against the rocks and the thought that the island wasn’t far behind my back provided a bit of security and calmed me. With this island behind me, I didn’t feel quite so alone out here.
Despite thoughts of the vastness of the open ocean and the mysterious depths beneath my board, which momentarily filled me with fear, the rush of speed and the fascination of windsurfing were stronger, and I left the island behind me at full speed.
CHAPTER VI
The waves came in sets, six-packs. The first wave begins to break at the shallowest point underwater in the west, continuing until it finally dies out on the rocks in the east, almost twenty seconds later.
This continuous crashing of waves onto the water’s surface is incredibly loud right from the start, at the very first pitch forward. It’s as loud as the onset of thunder after a close lightning strike in the heaviest thunderstorm. Then it gets louder and louder by the second until the wave breaks right in front of me. That’s when it’s loudest. The long wave then continues its break, slowly moving away from me. As the break moves further away, the thunder in my ears gradually fades. Before it completely dies out, the next wave is already halfway to me, and this repeats until the wave set is over. Then there’s a calm phase of up to half a minute before it all starts over again.
Since this natural spectacle repeats itself endlessly, it sounds almost like a never-ending melody played by the ocean’s orchestra.
Standing in the middle of this open stage, I am the sole spectator here, surrounded by sizzling snow-white saltwater foam and glittering saltwater pearls at eye level under the blue sky.
With my vision clear and the stinging saltwater in my eyes subsiding, I peacefully observed the musical performance, the next wave, which likely wouldn’t hit me with as much force since I had been pushed several meters back into the neck-deep hole by the last one.
Did I surf out here just to watch how the waves break? crossed my mind… No! Not like this, I thought. I looked toward the cliffs to see if there was any possibility of getting out there, since I wasn’t far from them.
The danger was too great; the waves raged near the cliffs, smashing powerfully against the black rocks. That would be too reckless, flashed through my mind instantly, and I immediately dismissed the idea. I turned my head west, observing the spot where the waves started to break for a while. About twenty meters behind that, the water was almost smooth. Where the wave didn’t break and the water was smooth, the bottom must be deeper. I needed to get behind the spot where the wave started breaking, but how?
But how? Walk? Paddle? Surfing against the wind was impossible. Should I walk twenty to thirty meters across these razor-sharp reefs? Or was it even forty meters? Even though it would be easier to surf back to the beach, tell Mischko it was impossible to surf out here, pull the board out of the water, carry my gear west along the beach, and then surf out—I decided on the wrong approach: walking.
One reason I couldn’t think clearly at that moment was that I still hadn’t processed the shock.
Desperate, I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t even surfed halfway out of the bay before I was already reduced to pushing or pulling my gear. Like a beginner! Having chosen the more difficult option of walking the entire distance left, against the wind, across the reefs to where I suspected deeper water, I decided to take a moment to observe the natural spectacle unfolding before me.
Lost in thought, I remained standing chest-deep in the water. I let the subsequent current and spray gently push me backward, staying within the hole. I turned toward the beach.
A different perspective from the water. Like a scene from the most beautiful vacation photos. A green oasis against the turquoise-green ocean under a clear blue sky. Looking from the ocean, my gaze fell on the houses on the cliffs to the far left, marking the northeasternmost point of the island. Not a soul in sight. I had no idea if someone was watching me from one of those houses at that moment because I hadn’t seen anyone up on the cliffs.
In that moment, I admired the people living in those unseen houses. How incredibly beautiful they have it here. In slow motion, my eyes swept from one house to the next, trying to spot someone—either at a window or on the property among the palm trees in their adjacent gardens. Nothing.
All I saw was the blue sky, the wooden houses, and the lush green vegetation surrounding them. Seven or eight meters below the houses, black lava rocks provided a solid foundation for these wooden structures. I turned my head from the northeastern tip across the roofs in the east, moving west to where the last house stood on the cliffs. Reaching the end of the cliffs, I looked down over the black lava rocks to the point where the bay began.
A sandy beach… of the finest quality… completely empty… I looked past the only three houses located south behind the beach. In the background behind these houses, the road was hidden, but in the distance, wildly overgrown mountain peaks and the blue sky were visible.
Looking back down and focusing on the third and final house here on the beach, my thoughts returned to Mischko. She sat on her towel, at least thirty meters from the house, looking at me questioningly, wondering why I was just standing in the water. Behind her, I only saw the grass, with the road behind it barely discernible.
The large trees behind the road, located between the road and the college area, were so tall their tops blocked the view of the white Mormon temple situated on the hill behind the college.
Over the green mountain where this white temple sat, a few fluffy clouds drifted eastward under a clear blue sky. Looking higher, the midday sun glared directly into my eyes; it seemed to have reached its peak. While observing all this, the thought crossed my mind: This island truly deserves the name “Paradise.” I had to think of Berlin again. In that moment, I didn’t regret a single Mark I had spent on this expensive vacation, even if it were just for this one instant. While contemplating my costly trip, I waved to Mischko. She seemed to have seen me and waved back.
I continued to observe the trees to Mischko’s left. This forest stretched tightly along the beach until it reached a curve resembling an Australian boomerang, where the beach extended northward into the ocean, ending at the black lava rocks of Malekahana Beach.
After making a full panoramic sweep, turning 360 degrees on my axis, I still hadn’t had enough. I wanted to keep watching the wave sets.
They arrived at regular intervals, always in that same six-pack.
I tracked the waves from their inception when they were far out in their initial build-up phase. On the smooth water surface, only minimal signs of a slight unevenness were initially visible. I call these signs small water bulges building up parallel to the beach, between the small island and the reef in front of me.
Where the first small unevenness appeared on the sea surface, you could guess that the bottom was beginning to shallow out right at that spot. After the last volcanic eruption, the lava flows had reached their furthest point here, where the first minor signs of water unevenness were visible.
The closer the small water bulges (minor signs of a wave on the smooth surface) got, and the higher the water hump rose, the more evident it became that the bottom was getting shallower and the wave simultaneously larger.
These initially small water bulges then turned into long water humps, which we call waves. Because these fairly long waves were in motion before my eyes, the closer they got to me, the higher they appeared. This towering, moving dark blue mass of water looked to me like a threatening, moving dark blue wall of water about to crash down on me at any moment.
The shallower the bottom, the faster the current pushed the dark blue wall of water toward me, and the higher the wave grew. After the wave had built momentum and reached its peak, the highest point of the wave curled forward, threatening to swallow me. Because I had enough distance at the moment, the situation only looked threatening.
The strong west wind blew continuously over the highest and thinnest part of the wave, sweeping it off like a broom.
From this wind-swept tip of the wave, snow-white saltwater dust formed, flying through the air to the east. The sun’s rays pierced through these feather-light, transparent, glittering saltwater crystals—this white water dust flying through the air at breakneck speed with the wind—and much like with dark clouds and rain when the sun shines, I continuously saw glittering, moving rainbow colors right in front of me.
Beneath the flying, snow-white, glittering saltwater dust and the rainbow colors, the wave was almost transparent. Therefore, the strong sun rays penetrating this thin layer of water also made the same glittering rainbow colors visible in the upper part of the wave. The turquoise-green color stood out the most.
Below the uppermost, first, almost transparent, glittering, multicolored third of the wave, the water began to turn slightly light blue, while the final, lowest third appeared quite dark blue to me.
With every wave break, the wave curled far forward, forming a tube; it looked almost like a tunnel. When the entire mass of water with all its weight crashed from above onto the almost smooth water surface, there was always a veritable explosion.
“Wwooooooooooo!!!!” Ever since the first crack and roar from my left in the west, when the wave first broke, my eardrums vibrated. The closer the wave rolled toward me from the north, the stronger the vibration in my ears became. The thunder and the roar from my left grew louder and louder by the second; the vibration could even be felt under my bare feet on the reefs. With its two-meter height, the wave broke right in front of me at a distance of six meters onto the razor-sharp reefs, covering them completely. The wave continued breaking continuously to my right. Since the wind was blowing from the west, and the wave, after breaking in front of me, continued to break eastward from my perspective and slowly moved away from me, the loud thunder and vibration in my ears and under my feet gradually subsided, and the wave grew quieter.
I couldn’t see what was happening here from the beach. It’s like an interplay between the reef and the waves. After the wave had washed these reefs with its white saltwater foam and the current carrying the white spray passed me by, those black, scrubbed-clean, glittering reefs repeatedly emerged above the snow-white water surface, reflecting their sleek black sparkle directly into my eyes.
Because I was currently clinging to the board with both hands, neck-deep in the water in a hole, the snow-white saltwater foam boiled and churned continuously right before my eyes, at eye level. The churning white saltwater foam in front of my eyes roared, tingled, sizzled, crackled, and hissed loudly and clearly in my ears, all beneath a clear blue sky here in paradise.
Magnificent! I was simply thrilled.
I had never observed and seen the waves from this fish-eye perspective before. In the past, when I caught waves, I surfed them up or rode them down standing on the board.
But how waves are formed, how incredibly beautiful individual waves are, and the varied glittering colors these waves possess—that became clear to me for the very first time in that moment. The waves here in Hawaii truly are something special; out here, they are much clearer and cleaner than at the beach where the bottom is sandy.
After about a ten-minute break, I decided to crawl out of the hole and walk west, where the waves weren’t breaking. I suspected that where the water was smooth, behind the break zone in the west, the water was likely deeper.
Because my ears had accustomed themselves to the thunderous echo over the past ten minutes, I now took it for granted and paid it no further attention.
Walking through the white, tingling saltwater foam in knee-deep water, I focused entirely on my steps and the individual rocks. With every step beneath the white spray, I first felt each reef under the sensitive bare soles of my feet; only when I was sure I wouldn’t tear the skin underneath did I slowly shift my weight onto my front foot.
These reefs, which I couldn’t see in the white foam beneath the soles of my feet, were constantly perplexing. Therefore, this path westward seemed to me like an unread book. While I read a book with my eyes, at this moment, every step forward felt like an unread line of text. While feeling the stone with the sole of my foot, I felt the stone; in other words, I read the stone with the sole of my foot. The sole of my foot told me how large the stone was, whether there was a depression or a hole in front of me, if my foot was brushing against the side of a razor-sharp reef, how uneven and how sharp the next reef was, and whether it was possible to put my full weight on it or not. The sole of my foot transmitted all this to my brain.
Sometimes I felt a large stone, sometimes a small one; sometimes, to my surprise, they were suddenly so smooth and slippery that the slight saltwater current frequently caused me to slip and lose my balance, falling with my entire weight onto the board and forcing me to brace myself with both hands. Each time, my board sank up to fifteen centimeters beneath the white saltwater foam in front of me, while my five-square-meter pink sail floated on the churning white spray. Because the white foam was up to my knees, every time I pushed the board down under the white, roaring, churning foam with my entire weight, I was well aware that I could scratch or break my board.
With every step forward, with every grope or mere touch of the reef beneath the bare soles of my feet, I felt as if I were stepping on thousands of tiny needles every single time.
When I was sure I could step onto the needle-like reef beneath my soles without injuring myself, I fully shifted my weight forward, simultaneously holding my mast with only one hand. If the pain under the soles of my feet became too intense, I would unexpectedly and involuntarily buckle my knee, automatically bracing myself on the board with my hand again. Also, the current frequently forced me to take an uncontrolled next step forward, compelling me to fully brace my weight on the board once more. Sometimes I took a step backward toward the beach, sometimes toward the surf, sometimes a step to the side.
Consequently, I often landed uncontrollably in a hole, submerged up to my head in water. My feet would dangle over the abyss, forcing me to swim. Sometimes I slipped into a hole up to my belly button.
Paddling through the white foam was impossible here; I wouldn’t have made any headway at all. After all, I still had the sail in my hand. I was too heavy for the board, which would immediately sink at least fifteen centimeters beneath the white foam under me. The white water in front of me was simply too shallow.
I should have had a clear head at that moment. It would have been so easy to surf to the beach and back.
No, I was too proud or stubborn and behaved like a beginner.
Actually, in that moment, I was a beginner. It was my first time out in the ocean in this bay, and I finally had decent wind. The days before, we had hopped from beach to beach in search of wind. When there was no wind, we stayed at the beach to swim.
Right in the middle of this white, roaring spray, I often thought of the bathtub at home in Berlin, filled with bubble bath. As I walked, the sun constantly reflected on the glittering, sizzling saltwater crystals on the white surface.
“My God, what did I do to deserve this?” I talked loudly to myself, almost like a madman.
After a while, I turned toward the beach to see how far I had walked. It seemed as if I had covered half the distance. Pondering slightly, I continued walking. Meanwhile, I didn’t notice that I hadn’t been walking parallel to the break zone. I had been entirely focused on the bottom, making sure I didn’t tear the soles of my feet or injure my legs.
It was only when the wave finally broke, and I found myself hanging from the board with both hands, my legs dangling between rocks in a large hole again, that I realized I had drifted off course.
I had probably drifted off course due to the constant slipping and stumbling. I found myself close to the break zone again.
Because I was near the break zone at that moment, clutching my gear desperately as I slipped into the hole, gasping for breath, the white, salty spray easily entered my mouth. At the same time, my board and pink sail were covered in white foam. I was cursing again.
I felt the power of the wave; my hands were cramped and stretching. The wave pressed my hip against the reef.
“Kiss my ass!!!” “What am I doing here!” I was cursing loudly again. I tried to get out of the hole, but during the strong current, I was powerless and remained stuck in the hole, my hip pressed against the rocks. In that moment, I was glad I had a windsurfing suit with long legs; my arms were bare from the shoulders down. Once the current passed, I seized the opportunity to get out of the hole. When I was almost out, the next moment, standing chest-deep in the white foam, I pulled the sail out of the white foam high above my head. When the white foam flowed off the sail and it became lighter, I held it with one hand. With the other, I pulled the board toward me and positioned the sail so that only the boom rested on the tail.
Now the entire sail was on the board above the water. With my left hand, I held the part of the boom attached to the mast so it wouldn’t slip off the board onto the water’s surface again, and continued walking. I was now positioned between the break zone and the board, trying to move away from the break zone.
In addition to the thundering of the waves, because I was walking west against the wind, I felt and heard the wind howling in my ears. Behind the surf, I could see quite well how the gusts of wind raced at breakneck speed, at irregular intervals, over the swells before the waves reared up. This gave me hope that my efforts wouldn’t be in vain.
For a moment, the howling of the wind suddenly reminded me of winter. Standing atop a mountain peak above a mogul piste. The two of us were completely alone. We were surrounded by snow-covered white fir trees. Due to the snow melting off the firs and freezing again, the trees looked as if they were made of crystal-clear, transparent glass ice.
We observed the heavily laden fir trees for a while, coated only with a thick layer of crystal-clear ice. The green needles were rarely discernible beneath the layer of ice.
With ski goggles over our eyes, a thick scarf around our necks over the ski suit. Light snowflakes fell from the sky, all this half an hour before darkness.
Because we had ventured far from the hotel, it seemed even colder than it was, as we fully expected not to reach the hotel before nightfall. Visibility was fifteen meters. The cold wind howled around our ears then, just as it did in this very moment.
At that moment, thinking about the cold, something clicked in my head.
“Am I stupid?” I asked myself loudly. “What am I doing here?”
Thinking about the ice-covered firs and the ice suddenly gave me a clear head. I grabbed the board, turned the nose of the board toward Mischko sitting on the beach.
My gaze drifted over the cliffs on the hill where the waves crashed beneath the houses, which meant the wind was at my back, as always. I lightly held the tip of the mast in my hand; to get the mast and sail over my head, I had to pull the mast and sail toward me over my head two more times.
Before handing the sail over to the wind, I had to place my left foot on the edge of the board, while my right foot was still deep underwater on the rocks. At the first touch of the sole of my left foot on the edge of the board directly in front of my face, supported by my swimming foot in the depths, I pushed the sail higher above my head so the gust of wind would have more surface area to hit. I felt my entire body moving upward out of the water.
Splash! Back in the water! “Bite me!” I cursed. I hadn’t even managed to surf to the beach.
For the umpteenth time, I was cursing since leaving the beach and struggling out here. I had the bad luck of the gust being too weak. Now I had the sail right on my head, and simultaneously, I heard the thundering of the wave that had just broken behind my back.
Like a poor pig, I surfaced from under the sail out of the white saltwater foam. Everything seemed to be against me. My attempt to surf to the beach had failed.
The white saltwater sizzled and crackled around me at chest height. Whatever, I had to walk again. Now I had to pull the boom out of the water again and place it on the tail so the sail would be clear of the white saltwater foam.
Step by step, like a soldier heavily laden with gear, I struggled forward through the white saltwater foam, heading west.
At that moment, I realized that walking also had a silver lining. I would never have learned how varied the bottom in this bay is if I had surfed out through the surf on the first try. Unfortunately, the black reef barrier had been in my way then.
While these thoughts crossed my mind, I was almost at my goal, the start of where the waves broke. Because the reefs no longer breached the surface, I realized that the bottom behind the start of the breaking waves, where the sea surface was smooth, was indeed deeper. Before I surfed out, I had to check if the soles of my feet had suffered too much. I sat on the wobbly board in the middle of the loud, rushing, tingling white spray; the board immediately sank at least fifteen centimeters beneath the water’s surface.
When I had the first leg on the board, I looked at the sole of my foot.
The sole of my foot was completely raw and red, as if someone had beaten or whipped me. I didn’t find any open wounds or blood. “Shit, that was close,” I thought aloud. My other sole looked the same. “The fin.” Yes, I had to check that too. I slipped off the board and turned it on its edge so I could see the fin. What a sight. Under the clear blue sky, the sun shone, the crackling white bubbles crawled and popped all around the hand holding the board. All the colors on my brand new fiberglass board sparkled in the sun. Pink, black, yellow, light green in the midst of the white, bubbling saltwater foam. The fin was light pink; it was in its box, right where it should be.
Without touching the light pink fiberglass fin, I turned the board from its edge back onto the water’s surface. Because I had walked the last few meters almost chest-deep through fresh, snow-white, rushing, crackling, sizzling saltwater foam, I would have preferred to lie on my stomach on the board and paddle to relieve the soles of my feet. Unfortunately, I was too heavy for my board, so I decided to swim the last ten meters, dragging the gear behind me. After about five minutes, I was finally ready. I turned the nose of the board into the starting position toward the small island, about three hundred meters away from me. When I lifted the mast tip, I saw only fat, dark blue water bulges rolling in my direction. Through my sail window, I looked east again toward the houses.
No one in sight. The gust of wind raced past my ears, a sign that I should try again. Under a clear blue sky, standing chest-deep in blue water, about seventy meters from the beach—no crackling spray around me for the first time in a long while—I attempted the next beach start.
I pulled the mast toward me and gripped the boom with both hands. My head was now squarely under the sail, and the sail was half a meter above the blue sea surface.
Hanging from the boom with both arms extended, I placed the sole of my left foot on the edge of the board directly in front of my face. With my arms half-extended above my head, squarely under the sail, I slightly lifted the mast tip and the sail higher into the sky so the wind would have more surface area to hit. At that moment, the wind pulled the sail upward toward the east. The sail pulled my entire body up from the depths, and automatically, my right foot left the bottom. In that moment, the board started moving and began to plane. While my right foot continuously swam upward from the depths, maintaining balance, I simultaneously shifted my left foot from the depths up to the edge of the board. When the swimming sole reached the water’s surface from the depths, it touched the edge of the board. At the same moment, I pushed the mast tip and the sail even higher toward the sky, away from my head. Only then did the wind fully catch the sail’s surface. In that moment, the wind pushed the sail up toward the sky. Hanging onto the boom with both hands, I felt myself being literally yanked out of the water.
Now that my body was completely out of the water, the board accelerated and finally started planing properly. A quick glance through the sail window at the houses, then over my shoulder back at Mischko.
She spotted my right arm in the air and waved back.
Slight uncertainty over the hump of the incoming, nearly breaking wave forced me to direct my gaze forward. When I crossed the wave and rode down the back of the incoming wave, the smooth, light blue sea surface opened up before me. At that moment, I slipped one leg after the other into the foot straps. “Then I’ll hook into the harness line and lean back slightly against the wind.” Liberated.
“Yüpppyyyyyy!!!!” I screamed loudly.
It had taken a long time… crossed my mind. All the frustration slowly subsided. I had definitely been out for an hour; that’s how long it took before I could finally surf. Having set my sights on the island, I looked through my sail toward the houses again.
It’s the first time in my life I’ve had such a beautiful view. A true paradise… I started daydreaming again.
It must be a wonderful feeling to own a house here. Magnificent.
I watched the waves crash against the black cliffs, so forcefully that the white foam was carried almost all the way up to the houses. Then I turned my head in the direction I was surfing and looked at the light blue sea surface about ten meters ahead of me. How deep is it beneath me?
In that single second when I thought about potential threats from the deep, almost scaring myself, I realized it wasn’t a particularly good thought. So, to distract myself, I looked through my sail window toward the houses again.
While trying to suppress the thought and fear of a threat in the dark depths beneath me by looking at the houses, I suddenly heard a loud noise a meter behind me.
Thoroughly startled and lightning-fast, I turned my head to the right, curiously looking to see what was making such a loud noise behind me. In addition to the thundering of the mammoth waves behind my back and the gusts of wind howling in my ears, I saw and heard my tail hissing behind me, which startled me in that moment. Relieved, I then looked at the white track my board was leaving on the turquoise-green sea surface; it instantly reminded me of the white wake of a jet ski or a Miami Vice speedboat.
I had just made it out of the bay; caught up in my excitement and brief fright, I only now realized how strong the gusts of wind were out here.
If I hadn’t been so mesmerized by the beauty of this island, I probably would have noticed immediately.
Hey… “What is that?” I widened my eyes questioningly. When I sat on the beach, I thought the rocks on our right side, where the houses were built, were the outermost corner of Oahu. From here, where I was at that moment, from my current position, I saw that there was another island in front of the houses, about five meters above the water’s surface.
The locals looking out of their windows from above look directly onto the island. This island prevents even larger waves and more saltwater spray from reaching the houses.
This island in front of the last houses stretches along the coast to the northeast, forming a small, narrow channel.
In the middle of this island, I spotted a giant hole, at least a meter in diameter. After a strong wave impact, the white saltwater spray flies through the hole to the other side of the island.
While the board glided over the smooth sea surface ahead of me, the fin behind me on my right tore the water’s surface open so violently that the water hissed loudly and sprayed high into the air. When I saw this…
“Yüpppyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!” I rejoiced as loudly as a little kid again.
Second by second, the white track behind me grew longer. Lifting my head slightly higher above the water’s surface and the foamy white track, I now saw only a tiny dot on the beach, which could only be Mischko. I waved to her again. Did she see me? Unlikely. I was approaching the small island.
When I cast another quick glance at the houses, I was already beyond this outermost northeast corner of the island, in the open ocean. Not a soul around except Adam. Being alone didn’t bother me; today, this ocean belonged only to me.
At full speed, I set course for the open ocean. I had the sun at my back, a clear blue sky, and a few fluffy clouds above my head. For the moment, I was fascinated by everything—the speed and the light blue water with its gleaming colors beneath my feet on my fiberglass board.
The sea surface ahead of me was light blue; the front half of my board was yellow with light green stars. On the back half beneath my feet, black and burgundy stripes about five centimeters wide were visible.
Ahead of me, traveling at full speed, I constantly crossed smaller and smaller humps, the first phase of wave formation. While I was so fascinated and caught up in the rush of happiness, the increasingly loud thundering behind my back drew my attention.
I turned my head to the left and looked over my shoulders to see what was making so much noise.
Not far behind me, I saw that I was surfing right past this small island at that very moment. The thought of surfing even further behind the small island didn’t cross my mind right then. Just looking at the open ocean, the vast horizon, and realizing that for thousands of miles ahead of me there was nothing but deep water until you hit Alaska—that thought alone scared me. If I started thinking about marine life now, fear would quickly creep in, and the fun would be over.
After turning my head away from the island and directing my gaze forward toward the horizon, I looked out over the endless expanse, which still slightly scared me in that moment. Only the loud crashing of waves against the rocks and the thought that the island wasn’t far behind my back provided a bit of security and calmed me. With this island behind me, I didn’t feel quite so alone out here.
Despite thoughts of the vastness of the open ocean and the mysterious depths beneath my board, which momentarily filled me with fear, the rush of speed and the fascination of windsurfing were stronger, and I left the island behind me at full speed.
CHAPTER VII
As the crashing of waves against the small island gradually faded and was barely audible, I turned my head and looked back over my right shoulder to see how far I had gone. So alone, far out in the open ocean, away from the island, I now felt so small and insignificant, like the tiniest, puniest grain of sand from a beach in a full bathtub.
Since the island was my goal and I was already so far out on my very first time on the North Shore, I decided to turn around soon and prepared for a jibe. First, I pulled the sail slightly toward my chest to release the line from my harness hook, which was attached to the middle of my boom. The boom is the round part I had to hold onto tightly with both hands the entire time.
The very moment I pulled the sail toward my body, the line released from the hook and fell straight down. Next, I pulled my right foot out of the strap and pressed down on the outer edge. It was merely an attempt at a jibe, a maneuver I still hadn’t fully mastered. There was no shame in that; after all, I was new to the fun board.
A slight feeling of unease grew inside me, as just the thought of the mysterious depths beneath my board and what might be swimming down there filled me with dread once again. Therefore, I was fully concentrated, trying at least to stay on the board so as not to fall into the water so far from land. While the front half of my fiberglass board dug its outer edge into the dark blue, smooth sea surface ahead of me, carving the board eastward, the strong midday sun rays reflected off my yellow-green, highly polished board. The bubbling white saltwater hissed loudly under the board and the outer edge. Snow-white saltwater foam flew at least half a meter through the air, carried by the wind behind my back.
It was a highly concentrated, yet still quite wobbly turn. Still, I hadn’t fallen into the water. Relieved, I slipped one foot after the other back into the foot straps, hooked back into the harness line, leaned back against the wind over the sea surface, and surfed toward the beach at full speed. While the nose of the glossy yellow front half of my fiberglass board gleamed yellow in the midday sun ahead of my feet, literally shredding one light blue wave after another, the noise in my ears grew louder by the second. I looked back over my right shoulder once more at that small island, which was about twenty meters away from me at that moment.
As I got closer, the crashing of the waves and the boom against the rocks was incredibly loud. The rolling roar and the hissing of the scattered white spray over the rocks pierced my ears—carried by the west wind blowing constantly at my back—as loudly as if I were sitting right on the rocks. And I got to experience all this under a clear blue sky.
In that moment, while observing the island and looking back over my shoulders, I felt like a world explorer, consumed by curiosity. I wanted to see exactly what this island looked like up close. The locals who rode the waves out here and I were the only ones who could say we had seen and experienced the island up close. Only we could describe how the roar of the waves sounded in this part of the planet and how loudly the waves crashed against the rocks of this island.
Today, I was the only one with the honor of experiencing and enjoying this natural spectacle up close. That alone made this moment incredibly special for me. I was alone out here, and this atmosphere and these seconds belonged entirely to me. There’s no amount of money I wouldn’t pay for these moments, even in the future. That’s how I felt right then. Tourists who come to Hawaii and don’t do water sports will never have this experience and will never discover this island for themselves.
Looking at this rocky, barren little island, completely obscured by hissing white saltwater foam behind my back at that moment; looking past the island to the background above the beach, where only tall trees and a dense forest stretched westward along the shore, curving slightly into the ocean like a bow; looking straight ahead across the churned-up light blue sea surface southward toward the beach where Mischko sat, imagining the grass and the road behind her that I could only guess at from here; looking higher into the background at the green hill where the white Mormon temple hid behind tall green trees; just taking in this view and the atmosphere around me—the waves crashing behind my back, the tail of my board hissing loudly two meters behind me, the west wind howling in my ears, all under a clear blue sky with a few white, fluffy clouds above my head—in that moment, I forgot everything. I was so fascinated that I was briefly distracted from whatever was swimming in the depths beneath me.
“Waaaauuuu!! Magnificent!” For the first time, I admired the waves from the open ocean crashing onto this island out here. I had flown from the other side of the world and was currently discovering a part of the earth unknown to me. This was a marvel of nature, a natural spectacle in the middle of the ocean that repeats itself every single day, even after I leave Hawaii.
“Wooooow!” This was a new chapter in my life. I was talking loudly to myself again. This time, I wasn’t cursing. “It’s so beautiful here!” As the lone windsurfer, I was in the midst of waves that likely traveled continuously from the Bering Strait in the north all the way to Hawaii.
In that moment, I realized why I loved nature so much. No matter what nature did, I was enthralled—be it an earthquake, fire, rain, snow, wind, storms, or floods. Today, near this small island in the middle of the ocean, I was experiencing nature anew and gaining a fresh perspective.
Here in paradise, far out from the beach, I looked from the north into the distance ahead of me, across the sporadically churned-up water surface, observing the waves from their inception phase to how they reared up.
Since I was quite far out, I had a wonderful view of the row of houses on the cliffs, which gradually disappeared from my line of sight behind the mast of my sail because the wind was at my back. After leaving the island behind and as the sound of waves crashing against the rocks faded, instead of taking the same route back, I surrendered entirely to the rush of speed. I leaned back completely, almost touching the water’s surface with my back to go even faster. I was now surfing at top speed for the first time, heading straight toward the houses built on the cliffs.
Because I was now surfing almost parallel to the waves and the beach, with no water humps or waves in the way, I was thrilled, truly experiencing the moment. Only now did I sense, feel, and understand what it really means to surf a custom fiberglass board with unlimited speed. I felt like I was in a small plane flying low over the smooth surface of the ocean. The thought that giving in to the rush of speed was a mistake didn’t cross my mind right then, even though I would have to tack back and forth across those two hundred meters a few times just to return to the spot on the beach where I had entered the water. I wasn’t thinking about that.
Before surfing out here, I had tortured myself for at least an hour, standing and walking over razor-sharp reefs just to be able to surf today. I still felt the wounds on the soles of my feet. That’s why I wanted to savor this opportunity and simply enjoy the speed.
As I approached the houses on the cliffs, the thundering of the waves against the cliffs grew louder in my ears. I looked up, hoping to spot a living soul. Not even a bird was flying through the air.
Only the palm trees waved tirelessly, greeting me as if to say, “Hey Adam, you’re doing great.”
Twenty meters from the houses on the cliffs, behind the break zone, I attempted something I had never tried before.
A quick glance over my right shoulder behind me, focusing for a second on the single dot on the beach that could only be Mischko.
Power jibe at full speed. I pulled my left leg out of the strap and pushed the outer edge down deep. This isn’t hard, exactly how I imagined it.
A rushing sound behind me. While the board carved left at full speed, I pulled the boom toward me to unhook. Too late. As a beginner on a fun board, I should have freed myself from the harness hook beforehand, just like I did out behind the island. I hadn’t wanted to fall in the water then, so I unhooked early!
Hanging and hooked to the boom, I unexpectedly flew through the air to the east with the sail and the wind. While flying through the air with the wind toward the water’s surface, I instinctively let go of the boom to protect my head and thrust both hands out in front of me. My flight forward with the wind was sudden, unprepared, and breathless. It felt like being on a giant roller coaster. The coaster plummets down the tracks, and I can’t catch my breath.
In the next fraction of a second, a loud crack echoed in my ears. Both my hands slapped onto the sail, while simultaneously, my ribs met the curved aluminum tubing of the boom—exactly where my hands should have been. Screw the ribs, I had a few of those on the front of my body.
My first thought. A heavy blow to the ribs. My boom! Now I was afraid I had broken the boom again.
About twenty meters from the rocky cliffs where the waves crashed beneath the houses, lying on my stomach, I pressed both hands onto the 5.2 pink sail beneath my face. While the upper half of my sail, along with the mast tip under my hands and my weight, slowly sank into the water, I wanted to slide off the sail into the water. Unfortunately, the harness lines were hooked to the boom and completely taut. Thus, I was immobilized.
To free myself from the trap, while both my palms pressed against my pink sail at least ten centimeters underwater in front of my face, I had to shift my hands and grab the boom beneath my ribs. This would allow me to pull my entire body, which was now slightly underwater, down from the mast tip toward my fiberglass board. Only after sliding my chest down a few centimeters from the mast tip toward the board did the harness line loosen from my hook, allowing me to finally unhook the line.
After unhooking from the chest harness, lying with my stomach half in the water, both palms pressed against my pink sail. Simultaneously, my body sank deeper into the water on top of the sail. As the sail sank beneath my hands, my face and mouth were right in the middle of it, underwater. To avoid swallowing water, breathless and in near-panic, I pulled one foot after the other out of the foot straps and let my legs drop from the board into the deep water.
After freeing myself from the trap, the first thing I did was look for a break on the round boom where I had slammed with my ribs and my full body weight. First, I saw that the black aluminum tubes weren’t separated. The round aluminum tubes where I hold on with my fingers all the time are covered in soft black rubber so we don’t press against bare aluminum. Because this rubber is elastic, even if my boom was slightly cracked, I had no chance of seeing accurately if there was a break at all. Only if I pressed really hard on the round tubes with my finger might I discover a broken spot. After checking…
“Hey, it feels like this boom isn’t broken after all…” this hopeful thought went through my mind.
Great, I thought. Then I remembered that I had bought the best material available.
Even if I wasn’t one hundred percent certain that my boom hadn’t broken beneath the soft, elastic black rubber, I was at least hopeful that everything was fine and prepared the sail for a water start.
One less thing to worry about, but my good instincts and my legs swimming in the deep now caused me concern. Although I didn’t know it at the time, my fears and suspicions were justified; in the years that followed, my best friend from Hawaii confirmed that right at this spot, directly in front of his house, swarms of sharks swim in the depths beneath my dangling legs.
Only the proximity to the houses and the secret thought that someone might be watching me at that very moment gave me a modicum of security.
My friend told me I only had to walk fifty meters from his house to the corner of this island and watch the fishermen. When the fishermen pull fish up from the depths on their hooks, the sharks attack the helpless fish on the line (powerless because they can’t change direction quickly while on the hook) and devour them. As a result, the fishermen sometimes pull up only half a fish or just the head from the depths. Often, the hooks have to be replaced because the sharks are simply too big.
Since I intended to get away from this danger zone as quickly as possible, I had no time to think about the underwater world.
After preparing the sail for the water start, I was very relaxed, my legs dangling in the deep. To push the sail from my head up above the water’s surface, as I began to tread water, I exerted myself and stretched both hands simultaneously, holding the sail above my head.
Since the sail had been entirely underwater beneath my stomach and my full body weight, it was full of water. While holding the sail above my head in the air, with water pouring off it onto the surface, my head went underwater for a second. Suddenly! A sharp, intense pain shot through my ribs under my chest, forcing me to unintentionally drop the sail back onto my head. For just a fraction of a second, the sail hit my head with the remaining water and rustled against me.
Because the current was pushing me closer every second to the rocks in the danger zone beneath the houses on the cliffs, I had no time to dwell on the pain.
Through gritted teeth, with my back to the west, experiencing severe pain under my chest on my ribs, and with my head squarely under the sail, I sighed loudly with my mouth closed, half-submerged, gasping for air. At the same time, I exerted myself and worked hard treading water in the depths. I had to make another intense effort to clear the remaining water from the sail. In addition to my legs working hard in the dark depths, I had to simultaneously lift both hands, holding the still-waterlogged sail above my head, stretch them toward the sky, and hold them there for a while until the rest of the water poured off my pink slalom sail.
Meanwhile, I was bobbing quite a bit in light blue waves about a meter high. These waves were gathering momentum right where I was, preparing to crash with full speed onto the black, razor-sharp lava rocks a few seconds later. While holding the pink sail above my head for several seconds to rid it of water, the wind whistled and howled behind my back. To my right, the waves crashed beneath the houses, and the hissing of the tingling saltwater foam not far from me under the rocks rang continuously in my ears. Amidst the roar of the waves and the impact against the rocks on my right, I was inching meter by meter closer to the danger zone, and the noise from my right was getting louder.
With my arms stretched above my head, I felt the sail getting lighter by the second, and I watched the last drops of water splash down from the sail onto the light blue sea surface.
The pink sail was free and light in my fingers. At that moment, I was fully focused on the wind, and I could hear it whistling even louder in my ears. It probably sounded louder because I no longer had to focus entirely on holding a waterlogged sail above my head while doing the exhausting work of treading water with both feet and keeping my arms fully extended.
As the sail grew lighter in my fingers, I felt the wind catch under the sail, trying to throw it to the east side. While my legs continued to work quickly and hard in the depths, my heart pounding wildly against my injured ribs, I breathed rapidly. I held onto the round boom with both arms extended above my head to maintain the sail’s balance in the wind, preventing it from being flipped over to the east.
With my body submerged up to my head, hovering in the water in this position, I couldn’t stretch my hands any higher, nor could I let the sail drop closer to my head. The wind’s strength was distributed so that fifty percent blew under the sail and fifty percent over it. This is the optimal position for a water start.
In this optimal position, while my right foot continued to tread water without pausing, I started lifting my left foot up from the depths toward the edge of the board.
The moment my left foot emerged from the depths and touched the outer edge of the board, I pushed the sail slightly higher above my head so the wind would have more surface area to hit. My 5.0 sail and the large surface area literally hauled me and my entire body upward out of the depths. My extended right foot, which had been continuously treading water, automatically emerged from the water along with my body and landed on the tail. My first water start in this danger zone couldn’t have been more perfect.
“Yeeaaaah!” As I screamed out my perfect water start, I forgot the pain in my ribs just below my chest for a second. An almost—but only almost—breaking wave tried to ambush me and push me back into the water. With years of experience and skill, I crossed it and rode down the back of the wave.
That went well and was successful, but next time I surf in this direction, I won’t get so close to those black rocks… the thought crossed my mind.
I tried to maintain the same course and surfed more upwind. As a result, I wasn’t as fast as before, but because I was surfing into the wind, it whistled so loudly in my ears that it felt as if the wind had suddenly increased from twenty-five to a hundred miles per hour. In that moment, I remembered the advice of the pros: Only when you can successfully complete eight out of ten water start attempts is it advisable to surf with the fun board you have under your feet.
I only felt safe and comfortable once I was hooked into the harness and fully planing. Mischko was now behind me, so there was no point in craning my neck to look for her.
For the moment, I had other concerns. I needed to hold my upwind course as best I could. If I didn’t, and if I eventually got tired and wanted to get out, I would have a hard time returning to the beach at the exact spot where I entered the water.
I glanced at the small island and looked at the furious surf a mile out behind it. The white caps revealed that it was hell out there. Were they just waves, or was there as much wind out there as there was here? Is there enough wind out there?
While contemplating these questions, I heard the relentless thundering of the waves behind me, the hissing of the fin at the tail of my board, and the loud whistling of the west wind in my ears.
Without realizing it, I had surrendered to the rush of speed again. “Yupyyyyyyy!” I roared enthusiastically like a madman.
With Mischko sitting on the beach in the bay to the south and the wind carrying my shout eastward, I could hardly imagine she could hear me.
I tried to make my primal screams as loud as possible. I wanted at least all the locals up in their closed houses to hear me; if they heard me, they would definitely look out.
The white spray kicked up by the nose of my board speeding over smaller waves was about a meter high and washed over my face.
To clear the white saltwater spray hitting my eyes at top speed, I had to keep opening my eyes and squeezing them shut tight. Afterward, I could feel small, tingling saltwater tears falling from my eyes onto my cheeks and crawling down my chin.
Because I was leaning so far back that I was almost dragging the water surface, the back of my harness—where I kept my drink cans in the pocket—suddenly slammed so hard into a small wave that I unexpectedly caught even more white spray right in the face. It happened so suddenly I had no chance to close my eyes. As a result, I was completely blind for a few seconds and needed time to squeeze the saltwater foam out of my eyes. I better stop doing that before I lose my cans, I thought, having had that happen to me a few times in Europe, back in Yugoslavia.
My next jibe near that small island wasn’t any better than the one a few minutes prior, not far from the black rocky cliffs where the houses stood. Except that this time, I didn’t land on the sail.
As long as I was on the board, I enjoyed windsurfing to the fullest.
Whenever my feet were dangling over the deep and moving freely in the water, like they were now, I felt uneasy. While swimming and adjusting the sail with both hands for a new water start, I automatically thought about the depth and the sinister underwater world.
Every time the wind pulled me and the sail out of the water, I felt relieved and glad to be back on the board. At the same time, the suppressed feeling of unease and fear vanished. I would feel much more comfortable in the water with some distraction. For example, if the surfers were out behind this small island, like they were a few days ago. Near them, I wouldn’t waste a single second thinking about the depth and the sea creatures.
If I could at least see a living person near the houses, I’d probably feel a bit distracted and relieved, knowing someone was looking out at me in the ocean.
Over the next hour and subsequent water starts, Mischko was always behind me because I was surfing toward the northeast corner of Oahu, not toward the beach. Every now and then, I’d crane my neck and look over my shoulder at the beach to see if she was still alone.
While hanging in the water with my legs over the abyss, constantly readjusting my sail for the water start, I kept feeling a sharp, pulling pain under my chest on my ribs.
Despite the pain, I gritted my teeth and painstakingly prepared for my water starts to get out of the water and back onto my board as quickly as possible. Since I fell into the water quite often during my turns (jibes) and frequently had my legs dangling over the deep, the wounds on the soles of my feet—sustained during my long walk across the razor-sharp reefs an hour ago—were cooled by the cold water so often that I could barely feel my soles and had no pain.
Having been out on the open ocean for more than an hour without seeing any sharks on the surface, I gained more confidence each time I surfed past the small island, leaving it behind me. Each time, I surfed further out, moving further away from the small island toward the horizon. I was often at least a mile from the beach, far out in the furious waves with their white caps. Feeling lonely, I frequently thought of the local surfers we had watched behind this island a few times over the past three weeks. Now that the sun was further west, it warmed my back.
During the following hour, I repeatedly surfed in a way that kept Mischko in my line of sight better. Since I had moved closer to the beach after several tacks back and forth, I no longer had to crane my neck backward as much while surfing from the open ocean toward the shore.
I constantly wanted to see if everything was okay and if she was still alone on the beach. Taking a more direct course from the open ocean in the north straight toward the beach, looking toward her, I was repeatedly blinded by the sun—twice. First, by the sun in the sky on my right, shining directly into my right eye, the one I could see with (my left eye is at 5%), and secondly, by the sun’s rays shimmering and glaring off the wavy, restless sea surface. I often needed several seconds for my eye to adjust so I could see Mischko clearly.
When heading toward land, I constantly admired and looked at the row of houses on the hill above the ocean.
You can never get enough of it… The colors… Blue sky… The green hill, then the blue ocean breaking in front of me. Magnificent! These images from that day will be etched into my life and memories forever.
Every now and then, I craned my neck to see what that windsurfer was doing far behind me.
He kept surfing straight into the bay, making it hard for me to see him. Since the reefs prevented me from surfing directly toward Mischko, I was a bit jealous. Where did he get in? I wondered internally. There were no houses there, no path, just dense trees and forest. When I saw him fall in as well, I felt a bit relieved. It meant I wasn’t the only one learning to jibe that day. While he kept surfing into the bay, I continuously drew my diagonals from the open ocean back to the hill with the houses, then back behind the small island; my route was about five hundred meters long.
Every time I surfed back from the cliffs to the island, I looked out under the blue sky at the churned-up ocean with its white caps. On the way back, I often looked over my shoulder at the windsurfer west of me. After about an hour, he was suddenly nowhere to be seen.
Did he fall in again? Curious, I looked behind me for several seconds, carefully scanning the entire sea surface on the west side all the way into the bay. Hmm.
The guy was gone! Was he taking a break or had he already gone home? He was simply nowhere to be seen, yet he had only been out for an hour.
Looking back toward Mischko in the bay, I saw that she was sitting in the shade, probably wrapped in her towel. Then I looked at the sun. It had long since dipped behind the tall trees, not far from the horizon.
Suddenly, I felt pain in both my hands, in almost all my fingers, even though I had been trying to spare my fingertips the entire time. The pain became so intense that I could no longer grip the boom properly. Surprised by the sharp pain, I let go of the boom, which immediately fell into the water on the east side.
Without the boom in my hands, halfway between the small island and the beach, I inevitably fell off the board into the water.
While adjusting the sail for a new water start, I was unpleasantly surprised, yet glad in that moment, that I hadn’t fallen into the water near the rocks beneath the houses or far out in the open ocean among the white caps.
Just as I was about to grab the mast and lift it along with the sail over my head, my fingers clamped up, completely stiff and immobile.
Not only that, but I also felt excruciating pain in all the fingers of both hands. While trying in vain, amidst intense pain, to stretch the fingers of my free hand, I stared helplessly at my hand with its stiffened fingers. I felt like a spastic. Despite wearing my long windsurfing wetsuit with long legs, I suddenly felt a pulling cramp in both my legs while still floating slightly deep in the water. The pain in my fingers was incredibly intense, but the cramp pain in both my calves in the cold water was unbearable.
Since I was incapable of attempting a water start in the middle of the ocean between the island and the beach, I struggled and pulled with great effort, somehow managing to free my cramped fingers from the mast I had intended to lift just seconds prior.
While the wind whistled in my ears in this churned-up ocean with its restless surface, and my aching, immobile legs dangled beneath the surface over the depths, I placed both aching hands, with their cramps and curled fingers, over the board.
The pain from the cramps in both calves and my fingers was so intense that it actually distracted me from thinking about underwater fish.
Meanwhile, I could barely endure the pain in my calves. It felt as if someone had driven a hot wire from the heel of my foot through my calf all the way up to my hip.
With my chest pressing against the edge of the board just below my face and both hands merely resting on top of the wobbly board, I carefully tried to hook my curled fingers under the opposite edge of the board. As my palms, covered in wet gray windsurfing gloves, touched the rough, sugar-coated, lacquered deck, I felt my damaged fingertips reach the cold, highly polished underside of the board. This time, the highly polished fiberglass underside didn’t scrape my damaged fingertips.
Because the pain in my calves was overwhelming and almost unbearable, and I was securely hooked with the fingers of both hands onto the opposite edge of the board, I was forced to deal with the calf pain first. With both legs stretched out beneath me over the depths and tensed, my severely cramped toes pointed upward from the deep toward the water’s surface, just like soccer players do on the pitch when they get a calf cramp. But while a standing soccer player grabs his tense leg and foot, holding it against his stomach and pointing the toes toward the ground…
Hooked onto the opposite underside edge of the board with the fingertips of both hands, my chin resting on the wobbly board, battling cramps and pain in my fingers and legs while dangling over the abyss, I was constantly tossed around on the restless, churned-up surface.
When I felt the pain and cramp in one of my legs subside after a period of tension, and the pain in one foot had almost vanished, I pressed the heel of the relieved leg against the tense toes of the foot that was still experiencing agonizing pain and cramping.
While the wind whistled in my ears and my board rocked in the waves of the restless ocean, I used the heel of my extended second foot to continuously press the toes of the cramping foot upward toward the water’s surface, pushing them against the shin. I kept the toes pressed down with my heel until the pain in the calf subsided about two minutes later. Once the pain in that calf was gone, I repeated the process with the second foot, hanging over the unfriendly abyss in the ocean churned by the waves.
Freed for the moment from the pain and cramps in my legs underwater, I now focused on my curled, aching fingers, which were still hooked like fishhooks onto the smooth bottom edge of the opposite side of the board. With my chin pressing lightly on the board, I first pulled my right elbow toward my chest just enough so that my damaged fingertips—under excruciating pain—slowly released their grip on the highly polished, yellow, glass-smooth bottom surface. Under extreme tension, they slowly slid upward over the smooth edge of the board, right in front of my eyes, onto the rough deck surface.
Once my now relaxed right elbow rested on the wobbly board and my fingers were almost straight, I turned my palm up to see what my fingertips looked like after this painful ordeal.
While my elbow rested relaxed on the board, I looked in disbelief and saw that I had rubbed off even more of the saltwater-softened skin from my fingertips. Now I tensed my left hand, which was still hooked by the fingers, and pulled my elbow across the board toward my chest.
During this tension of the fingers on my left hand beneath the highly polished fiberglass board in the water, in addition to the cold from the underside of the board and the pain in the tensed fingers of my left hand, I once again felt pain in the fingers of my right hand, which had just slipped off the bottom edge. While the palm of my right hand faced the sky, resting freely on the board, I looked at the intensely painful fingers, at a loss for what to do. About ten centimeters in front of my eyes, I watched as my fingers, without me willing it, slowly began to curl up on their own again, bending upward toward the sky. In that moment, I felt like a spastic, as the fingers of my left hand were immobile and hooked onto the opposite edge of the board, while the fingers of my right hand, resting on the board, slowly curled upward right before my eyes.
Before the fingers on my right hand could fully curl up again, I flipped my palm 180 degrees toward the board and placed my aching fingertips onto the rough deck surface. Then, as quickly as I could, I pulled my left hand—which was already hooked and tensed under the edge of the board—toward me and placed the elbow of my left hand directly onto the back of my right hand, which was lying on the board with almost fully curled fingers. Using my entire body weight, I pressed my elbow down onto the back of my right hand. My injured, bloody fingertips, with skin partially rubbed raw on several fingers and bruised, were forcefully pressed against the rough, sugar-coated deck of the board. While my palm now faced the deck, my fingertips formed a “U” shape, and only the ends of this “U” were pressed against the rough, sugar-coated surface. Those were my bloody, open fingertips, with their water-softened, exposed skin. As the fingers slowly spread apart and straightened out on the rough board surface under my full weight, the softened, open skin on my fingertips was rubbed raw even further. I had no time right then to worry about what was happening underneath those fingertips. I clearly saw my fingers slowly straightening out on the board, about ten centimeters right in front of my eyes, just below my chin.
Once these fingers were lying straight on the board right in front of me, I kept my elbow pressed against the back of the hand for a while, maintaining the pressure on the board until the pain eventually subsided. This was true self-torture. Because I was already in excruciating pain, pressing down on the back of my hand with my elbow did nothing to change the agony.
Now I repeated the exact same process with my left hand.
Since the fingers of my left hand had also slipped from the thick edge of the board onto the rough deck, just like the right hand, they were still half-curled. To fully straighten these fingers, I placed my palm with the fingertips in the middle of the board. Then, using my elbow, I pressed this hand down with my entire body weight onto the rough, sugar-coated board surface until my fingers finally straightened out, and I felt the pain and the cramp subside. While my elbow pressed down on my left hand, my eyes remained fixed on my freshly straightened right-hand fingers, just a few centimeters from my nose. The thought that I was acting like a spastic crossed my mind again.
Free of cramps in my calves and now in my fingers as well, I rested my elbows on the board for a moment and tried once again, very slowly, to curl and straighten my fingers. Realizing I could do this, I massaged them for a while until they were almost warm. After a total of about ten minutes bobbing in the high swell with my legs dangling over the abyss, I decided to attempt a new water start.
At that moment, I thought a cloud had covered the sky. I turned my head toward the beach, looked west, and only then realized I had been in the shade the entire time. The sun was hiding behind the tall trees. What time is it? How long have I been surfing? How long have I been dealing with these cramps?
I lowered my gaze from the tall trees and their peaks down over the sea surface in the west. Not only had the sun disappeared behind the tall trees, but I noticed the other windsurfer was nowhere to be seen either. Without the sun and without the windsurfer, I suddenly felt a tension, an inner restlessness. As if something unpleasant and unexpected was about to happen. I suddenly felt under pressure. What else could possibly happen, I thought, besides all the injuries I already have?
First, the soles of my feet had suffered during the walk across the reefs; then the bruised ribs from the unfortunate first water landing onto the boom in front of the houses; then the raw fingers, and now the cramps. Now I was feeling thirsty and hungry on top of it all. Oh, yes, I would really love something to eat and drink right now.
Only one thought was going through my head: the sun will soon drop below the horizon, it’s time to surf to the beach, so I need to get out of this cold water quickly. If I start positioning the sail in the cold water now, will I manage to get onto the board? Will I get a cramp in my fingers again?
Looking toward Mischko, it seemed to me as if the waves rolling onto the beach were much larger than they had been when I left the beach and headed out into the ocean earlier. Because the reefs behind the crest of the breaking waves jutted out of the water at least thirty centimeters above the surface, forming a large black wall, I began to worry even more. Not only had I experienced cramps, but now, in addition to worrying about getting a cramp during the water start, I was concerned about how I would reach the beach without damaging the board.
I wasn’t afraid of the wave itself; I was worried about what would happen while crossing and riding the wave if I didn’t have enough wind at the exact spot where the reefs protruded from the water. In the middle of this bay, where the reefs stick high out of the water, a crash is inevitable if there’s no wind blowing.
I didn’t want to risk a scratch or a break on my new board, so I looked back at the spot where I had originally entered the water. The waves were huge there too now, but it wasn’t as bad, because at least from here, no reefs were visible at that spot.
While I was preoccupied with my cramps, I hadn’t even noticed that the current had dragged me almost into the channel not far from the houses, between the long island and the cliffs. At the end of these rocks, upon which the houses were built, begins the east side of the island of Oahu.
My inner restlessness and tension had been justified. “Shit!!” I was cursing again. Looking through the channel far to the east, twilight was already setting in! What do I do now? Being just fifteen meters from the channel, a decision had to be made quickly. Surfing carefully with the wind through the channel to come out on the east side of the island might be easier. After all, the west wind had been blowing all day.
In this channel, between the islands and the houses, the rocks at the end of the island were up to eight meters high and steep. If I fell into the water between them in the swell and had to cling to the board, the very first wave of the surf would kill me.
Surfing through the channel—I couldn’t afford to entertain that thought. Mischko was waiting for me here on the north side.
There was only one solution: I had to surf out of this area toward the small island several times to set a direct course for the beach, aiming for the exact spot where I had originally entered the water. The spot where no reefs were visible.
While preparing for my next water start, swimming in the cold water, I asked myself again: Will my fingers hold up now, or will I immediately cramp again? During the preparations for the water start, I noticed that the wind seemed to have died down at that very moment. That too! went through my head! I was almost in despair. Now I was worrying about the water start. Would I have enough wind?
Grasping the boom tube with both hands, attempting to curl my fingers, I actually felt a cramp in one hand, but only partially, in two fingers. I quickly gave those two fingers a brief massage. Once they warmed up, I tried without gripping the boom. Since the wind had also died down, almost desperately, once under the sail, I simply used my palms to push the boom and sail higher above my head. Internally, I prayed this water start would work. Once I had lifted the sail high enough above my head, whether I wanted to or not, I had to curl all my fingers to hang onto the boom when the wind pulled me up out of the depths. Pushing the sail even further up and away from my head, I felt resistance in my sail; there was just barely enough wind, and I was yanked out of the water on the first try.
The danger of being pushed into the channel and the surf between the island and the houses in the next few minutes was over. Overjoyed and relieved, with no cramps in my hands, I stood with both feet on the board. Hungry, thirsty, and injured, instead of surfing to the beach, I was forced at this moment to move away from the shore.
A few seconds later, having distanced myself from the cliffs and the channel, the wind fully caught the sail again. Now hanging from the hook on my chest harness, my palms simply rested against the boom, while my fingers remained straight and extended over the boom tubing, as if hovering in the air over a computer keyboard. This spared my fingers from cramping.
The further I surfed out into the open ocean toward the north, the more uneasy I felt. The twilight in the east, thirst, hunger, and injuries plagued me mentally. Being far out now, I curiously glanced westward over my shoulder. On the slightly blue, restless water surface in the middle of the ocean, I saw a golden, resplendent path stretching from the setting sun almost to my eyes. It wouldn’t be long before the red fireball extinguished completely on the horizon.
Now I needed to think calmly. I ruled out making several short tacks, because in my exhausted state, I would end up in the water too often and almost certainly get cramps again in the cold water.
To cover the estimated one hundred and fifty meters parallel to the beach against the wind, I had to surf far out into the open ocean behind the island ahead of me; only then could I turn around and surf back to the beach.
While worrying about my condition and how I was going to surf back to the beach, Mischko had been sitting in the shade for a long time, probably wrapped in her towel, waiting for me.
In the last fifteen minutes, I hadn’t had a single second to think about Mischko. What is she doing now? What will she think when she sees me surfing far, far away behind the small island, something I had already done several times today?
With the sun almost below the horizon and no longer warming me as before, I felt my wetsuit quickly turning cold against my back due to the chilly wind. It felt as if I were naked or wearing only a wet T-shirt on the board. Hearing the loud crashing of the waves against the rocks and the hissing of the saltwater foam behind me, I knew I was surfing right near this small island—the island that had given me a sense of security all day long.
If anything had happened to me, I could have swum or paddled to the island. I had been surfing alone in front of this bay all day, but when I was out in the open ocean behind this island, I never strayed too far, because having it nearby made me feel less isolated.
Gazing toward the northern horizon, across the open ocean into the far distance, and just the thought of moving further and further away from this island at that moment filled me with genuine fear. Why?
After so many hours of windsurfing out here, I was so exhausted, thirsty, hungry, and nursing several injuries that I would have loved nothing more than to be on the beach; I would have loved to eat and drink something right then.
As I continued gliding, I heard the roar of the fin at the tail behind me and the wind whistling in my ears.
Because my fingers in front of my chest were constantly in the shade, and the cold wind blew incessantly against my back and into my ears, I felt my fingers growing colder and colder.
This brought my thoughts right back to the cramp. When I attempt to turn around, at the latest by then, I’ll have to grip the boom tightly with these cold fingers! I’ll have to curl them. Will I get the cramp after all?
I looked more closely to the north; the blue sky and blue water had changed colors, appearing slightly gray in the distance. The atmosphere and everything around me no longer looked so friendly. Night was approaching at my back, making me nervous.
Far off in the distance to the north, several thousand miles away, lay Alaska—a thought that suddenly crossed my mind. Just the idea that nothing but water and endless depths separated me from the Bering Strait and Alaska sent a shiver down my spine.
With the sun almost entirely set, and the golden path on the sea surface behind me fading by the second, all I saw far out to the north ahead of me were three colors: a gray sky, white caps from the breaking waves, and the black, endless surface of the sea.
Surfing out here over the infinite depths, the gigantic sea surface swelled before me as if in slow motion. Watching the crests of the giant waves, I felt slightly intoxicated. Despite this feeling, with the wind whistling in my ears and the loud hissing of the fin at the tail behind me, I surfed further into the uncertainty of the north. Out here, I was no longer surfing waves; these were genuine, long, black, gigantic mountains of water and deep wave troughs.
When I surfed from the very top, from the highest point where the wave broke, down at least thirty meters to the lowest point of the trough, I was in the middle of the valley. Looking back then, the land where Mischko sat vanished from view. How deep are these valleys? Ten, maybe fifteen meters?
At that moment, I saw nothing but a gigantic dark mass of water all around me. Ahead of me, behind me. To my left and to my right.
I was well aware that I had left the small island behind several minutes ago. I hadn’t heard waves crashing against rocks for a while. When I surfed up the black mountain and reached just below the breaking crest, and turned my head right to look behind me, I had to search for a long time to spot the small island again.
Taking that long to find the small island behind me, gazing across this gigantic dark mass of water—whether I wanted to or not—made me feel incredibly lonely and far away from the world. How far out was I? It was hard to estimate out here on the sea surface. A mile or even more? Because I kept moving further from the island, fear crept deeper into my bones, and my knees gradually grew weaker.
While surfing up and down the dark wave troughs at top speed, I was continuously accompanied by two distinct sounds in my ears: the roar and hiss of the fin at the tail, and the strong whistling of the wind behind my back.
Right at the lowest point of the dark, smooth, gigantic valley, the realization hit me: if I looked back now, I wouldn’t be able to see the beach where Mischko was sitting. Better not look, otherwise I’ll feel even more uneasy and lonely.
Suddenly, I thought of Mischko again. What is she thinking now? She’s probably wondering what I’m doing. Why I haven’t returned.
Will I ever return? The thought crossed my mind only briefly. If I got a cramp and couldn’t hold the boom with my hands, I’d leave the sail out here, lie on my stomach on the board, and paddle back to land with the current without the sail.
What was I not thinking about right then? If I were to lie on my stomach and paddle the whole time with cramps in my fingers, my body, along with the board, would be at least fifteen centimeters below the water’s surface.
Due to hypothermia, I might also get a calf cramp again on the way to the beach. How long would it be before I couldn’t move my hands with cramped fingers at all?
If I had thought of that at that moment, I would have turned around immediately, right there, at the lowest point of the valley I was currently in.
Besides, to the sharks, I would look exactly like a turtle. The perfect victim. Thank God, I didn’t think of that at the moment and surfed back up out of the valley.
Even though my palms were merely resting on the boom tubing and I wasn’t straining my fingers, the cold wind blowing continuously from behind into my ears had long since made my bare fingers cold.
Every time I surfed up from the trough and the lowest point of the water valley, as I neared the peak of the wave where it broke, I had to reduce my speed to cross the wave without launching into the air and taking a swim.
At the very top, trying to cross it, I had to pass through the white spray, the exact spot where the wave broke. Only gentle hops and a light slapping of the tail were permitted on the back of the incoming, gigantic mass of water.
Once on the other side of the wave, I faced the exact same thing again: a dark, unfriendly, smooth water surface stretching down to the lowest point of the trough I was currently in.
Surfing up and down at top speed under a blue sky and sunshine—that would have been incredibly fun. Unfortunately, the sky above my head was gray, the sun was hiding behind my back, and it was getting darker and darker. When I went in, under bright sunshine, I enjoyed the water spraying and constantly washing my face. Now, it was annoying and cold. Therefore, I tried not to hang too low in the harness with my back over the water, aiming to keep the spray out of my eyes. I needed to see every meter that lay ahead of me.
Far ahead, looking east through my sail window, I could already see the approaching dark night.
Despite the fear, my weak knees amidst the gigantic mass of water surrounding me, my inner restlessness, and the fear of getting cramps, I tried constantly to calm myself. Nearing the spot where I intended to turn around, I took a closer look at the rougher waves out here for the first time. I asked myself: Am I surfing straight toward a reef barrier again? It was possible that the lava here had formed a mountain just below the water’s surface, not far ahead of me.
Since the sun had likely disappeared completely below the horizon behind me a few minutes ago, and the golden path on the sea surface was gone, these waves far out here suddenly looked even more unfriendly and darker than just a few minutes prior.
I asked myself a second time almost simultaneously: Is the bottom shallow ahead of me again? Out here in the open ocean? If it really was as shallow as in our bay, I wouldn’t be able to see the reefs ahead where the rough waves and the abundance of white saltwater foam were! I could damage my tail fin, the thought crossed my mind.
Having been thinking about Mischko back in the bay just seconds ago, she came to mind again. The same recurring thought. Now she was alone on the beach, and it wasn’t exactly safe. How could I let this happen? Unbelievable! I am an idiot!
By now, I was almost out of the trough again.
I needed to hurry back and turned my head. Spotting the small island behind me, I realized that if I wanted to surf around the island from the other side, I would have to surf even further north over the eerie, rough, unfriendly incoming mountains of water.
Shit!!! I cursed quietly to myself into my stomach, crossed the highest point—the breaking crest—and surfed almost desperately down into the next black valley with its smooth water surface. I had to surf around the island from the west side!
When I reached the bottom and tried to surf straight up out of the valley, this time, an unusually large wave came toward me from above, unexpectedly. Almost at the top, in the final quarter of the valley, I quickly turned around to look behind me toward the beach.
Surrounded by the gigantic dark blue mass of water, neck craned, I became disoriented in that moment because I couldn’t see land. Where did the land go all of a sudden? In that moment, I felt so tiny, small, and above all, lonely, as if I were hundreds of miles from shore.
For several seconds, I kept surfing up out of the valley at full speed with my neck craned. Impatient, desperately wanting to see land behind my back, I continuously heard the hissing of the fin at the tail and the wind whistling in my ears. At the same time, it was getting louder and louder in my ears because I was approaching the highest point where the wave broke.
After several seconds of searching in vain for land across the gigantic dark blue mass of water behind me, with no land or island in sight, I heard the roar of the breaking wave ahead of me so loudly that I had to snap my craned neck back around lightning fast. Exactly what I had desperately wanted to avoid happened: in a fraction of a second, everything before my eyes turned white. I and my board were right in the middle of the breaking wave. A deluge of white water slammed into my entire body, pushing me backward.
To avoid landing on my windsurfing gear, I unhooked from the harness line in a flash and let go of the boom.
While involuntarily leaping backward through the air, my hands releasing the boom, my front foot—the only one in a foot strap—slipped out, and the wind dragged the sail and board to the east.
Almost simultaneously, I felt a hard impact on my back and the back of my head. In free fall, eyes closed, my body sank backward beneath the dark, cold water surface without my gear.
When I started surfing in this direction about ten minutes ago, I hoped I wouldn’t have to swim even once, terrified of getting cramps in my fingers again.
A few seconds ago, when searching in vain for land, the gigantic mass of water had blocked my view, scaring me and making me feel so incredibly lonely. A few seconds before that, surfing almost out of the valley, unable to see land even though I should have been able to, I was disoriented, feeling even more insecure, and fear began to well up inside me.
If I had felt uneasy, scared, and lonely earlier with the wind in my ears and the hissing fin at the tail above the water surface, with no land in sight, now, sinking deeper and deeper backward with my eyes closed and the back of my head entering the water, in this fraction of a second, I felt completely powerless, surrendering to fate.
Far from land in the open ocean, a few meters underwater, in cold water, my body floated above thousands of meters of dark depths, like being in the atmosphere of deep space.
Once the wave’s current passed and my body stopped moving underwater, I couldn’t tell up from down with my eyes closed and arms extended. Having found myself in this underwater situation often, I waited a fraction of a second until my heavy legs slowly dropped into the depths, while my upper body floated upward, supported by the air in my lungs, my wetsuit, and my buoyant harness.
As my head broke the surface from the depths, emerging in the middle of the white spray, the white saltwater foam roared and hissed loudly around me, tingling against my face. Opening my eyes, surrounded by the gigantic mass of water, far from land in the open ocean with no land in sight, and unable to see my windsurfing gear, my entire body trembled. With several stinging drops of saltwater in my eyes, my vision blurred. I breathed shallowly and rapidly, hearing myself sigh loudly in mortal terror. The wind was loud, whistling in my ears. In a panic, desperate to spot my gear, I frantically turned my head back and forth, spinning on my axis.
In this moment of panic, I wasn’t aware that if I got cramps in my calves and fingers right now—far from land, hypothermic, hungry, and thirsty, just like I had near the beach half an hour ago—I would never make it back to the beach alive; it would have been the end for me!
While frantically spinning around, searching for my board, cold, tingling saltwater drops continuously ran from my hair over my forehead, past my eyelashes into my eyes, and down my face. Breathing shallowly, rapidly, and frantically with an open mouth, sighing loudly, the cold water from the high white spray seeped past my lips into my mouth, which I kept trying to spit out loudly.
When, after a few seconds, I finally spotted the board through the stinging saltwater drops, blurred amidst the hissing white spray, I was struck by true mortal terror! Separating me and my board was restless, wavy, hissing saltwater spray and what seemed at that moment like a vast distance of about six to eight meters.
Just seconds before I was thrown from the board into the water, I felt uneasy because I couldn’t see land. While my body floated underwater seconds ago, I surrendered to fate. Now, seconds after surfacing from the depths, surrounded by hissing white spray, I was even more disoriented, engulfed by giant mountains of water. The first thought that crossed my mind…
Seeing the board, I knew I wasn’t lost yet, but I was terrified to death, gasping for breath and sighing loudly. The board seemed almost unreachable in that moment, appearing even further away than it was. Beneath my feet lay at least a thousand meters of dark, spooky depths; I was far from land. I was acutely aware that even if a threat were swimming in the white, restless swell of foam between me and the board, I wouldn’t be able to see it amidst the high saltwater spray surrounding me.
With the thought lingering in the back of my mind that something from the depths could bite my legs in the hissing white spray at any second, or that by swimming head-first through the high spray toward the board I might swim right into a threat, I began to swim for my life in pure mortal terror.
The strong wind blew at my back, whistling in my ears, while sweeping the tiniest saltwater foam bubbles across the sea surface eastward ahead of me. As my forehead plowed a path through the cold, high spray while swimming, it sizzled, crackled, and hissed loudly in my ears and against my face.
My eyes, full of stinging saltwater, could only see a blur. They were greedy, staring continuously toward my gleaming yellow-green board bobbing gently on the foamy, hissing sea surface. My pink sail in the white spray and the back half of the board with its pink and black stripes were barely visible. While swimming, every time I stretched my hand forward and pulled it backward beneath my body through the hissing, sizzling white saltwater foam, I expected something to attack me from below or snap at my hand at any second. This constant tingling on my face felt like ants continuously crawling all over me with their tiny legs. Staring constantly at my board, more and more saltwater drops entered my open eyes. Swimming, I sighed loudly, spitting the unpleasant saltwater from my half-open mouth, feeling every part of my body tremble with fear.
While swimming, every part of my body was stretched out beneath the water surface over the abyss the entire time. My greatest fear was a bite to my stomach, as it is the softest part of my body and was constantly exposed to the depths. Half a minute later, with the board under my hands, I felt a slight mental relief that I hadn’t been bitten. My heart still hammered wildly against my vibrating ribs like a drum. Hanging from the board by my hands, I was still breathing frantically—short, quick breaths—and I could still hear myself sighing loudly, still consumed by mortal terror. I spat the accumulated water from my mouth. With my legs in the cold water and my hands holding the board, I tried to calm down for a few seconds. I quickly wiped the last drops of saltwater and the sticky mucus that had welled up in my mouth off my lips with one hand.
As the wave that had washed me off the board slowly moved away toward land, I hung from the board with both hands, the hissing sound of sizzling white spray and the whistling of the wind in my ears. Second by second, I slowly sank deeper into the water trough. Gradually, the white saltwater foam dissipated, and the sea surface around me grew darker and darker. On the somewhat smoother but still restless water surface, I looked west toward the dark, smaller waves whipped up by the gusts of wind. The sun had long since set; only the dark sea surface remained visible.
While my pink sail rustled softly beside me in the restless water, bobbing gently on the surface, I climbed onto the board in the middle of the trough, trying to fully calm down. Sitting, I desperately clamped my legs around both sides of the board, like a rider on a horse. Under my weight, as always when I sat down briefly, the board sank at least twenty centimeters beneath the water’s surface and felt quite wobbly under my rear.
To maintain balance on the wobbly board and avoid slipping off, I leaned slightly forward and clung tightly to both entirely smooth edges with my hands. I balanced with my feet swimming and my legs dangling on either side of the board. I gripped the smooth, highly polished underside of the board with my battered, red, blue, and partially skinless fingertips. Since the bottom of the board had been in cold water all day, feeling the coldness of its underside was incredibly soothing to my injuries. It was a moment akin to getting injured at a sporting event and receiving an ice pack from a sports doctor.
Just knowing that I was gripping the smooth, highly polished underside of the board and not the rough, sugar-coated top deck was mentally and spiritually comforting.
My heart was still hammering hard against my ribs, but my breathing was no longer as frantic and rapid because I was sitting on the board and not exerting myself in the water like when I was swimming. Sitting there, the only thing I did was spit and wipe the last water drops from my lips while looking about twenty meters north, where the next wave was rolling toward me.
How deep is it here? Sitting and wondering, I looked up from the trough at the black, smooth water surface, disturbed only by small wind-whipped waves. Looking beyond the peak of the next incoming wave, I saw the gray sky. Beneath the gray sky, where the wave pushed the saltwater foam ahead of it from the north toward me, it looked as if a dark, black avalanche of mud from a mountain was slowly moving toward me. Lonely, with no land in sight, far out in the open ocean, just watching this gigantic, dark mass of water moving toward me filled me with dread; it was terrifying.
At least fifteen to twenty seconds passed before, sitting on my wobbly board with my rear submerged, I rose from the lowest point of the large, dark water trough to the very top, where the next breaking wave reached me. This time I was prepared. After the wave pushed me backward toward land while sitting, tossing and washing over me, I still held on with all my strength, gripping both edges of the board tightly, glad to still be on it.
“Don’t panic, nothing happened,” I spoke soothingly to myself. My sail rustled softly behind my back. My rear end, seated on the wobbly board, felt insecure, continuously submerged at least fifteen to thirty centimeters. Clinging frantically to both edges of the board with my hands, leaning forward, I was on the verge of twisting completely with the board and falling into the water.
Insecure and wobbly, with the board underwater, my legs and feet made quick back-and-forth swimming motions in the middle of the white, hissing saltwater foam to support and maintain my balance. At this moment, far out in the open ocean, surrounded by a gigantic mass of water and the black depths beneath me, the wind whistling in my ears, dehydrated, hungry, scared, and agitated, I felt as if I were in a massive haunted house. Right now, it felt like a bad dream.
Since falling into the water, I hadn’t had a single moment to think about getting cramps in my fingers, the very thing I feared most. My only thought had been the cold, smooth underside of my fiberglass board, which my injured fingertips clung to desperately without a break. Sitting on the board, leaning forward, I used one hand to wipe the water and the last remaining drops from my face and eyes after the wave washed over me, while my other hand and its fingertips maintained their firm, desperate grip on the highly polished, glass-smooth lower edge of my wobbly board.
After calming down and breathing a bit more easily, I suddenly felt excruciating pain in my fingertips. The pain forced me to suck in a sharp breath, and I heard myself groan.
The pain forced me to let go of the lower edge of the board with my other hand. Unsure in the still-restless ocean whether I would slip into the water, I quickly tried to swim frantically with both legs in the depths from both sides to maintain the board’s balance. I opened both my hands and took a quick look at my fingertips.
After more than four hours in the water, I saw that the skin on my fingers was completely white and waterlogged. On several fingers, the skin was rubbed even rawer than when I had discovered it half an hour ago, meaning…
In the last few minutes, from constantly pressing against the smooth underside of the board, I realized I had rubbed even more skin off my fingers. That’s why I saw three colors on my fingertips: waterlogged white, red, and blue… The red was likely the flesh. The severe pain made me fear another cramp, just like half an hour ago when my hand curled up on its own under immense pain right before my eyes on the board.
My next thought… If I stay on the board too long, the current might pull me too far east. I have to get off the board, but quickly! I told myself again.
I looked around the foamy water surface once more. No fish fins in sight.
Sliding off the board until my entire body, except for my head, was underwater, with the fear lingering in the back of my mind that something from the depths could attack me at any second, I spent several seconds adjusting the sail for a water start. My biggest fear right now was for my rapidly swimming feet.
While trying with both hands to push the boom and the sail, which was full of cold water, up over my head to clear the water from the sail, my legs worked very hard and moved quite fast beneath the surface. My heart started beating faster again, and my breaths became quicker and shorter.
I hoped I wouldn’t get a calf cramp right then, because the feet treading water in the depths bore most of the effort, and those quick back-and-forth movements strained the calves the most. The west wind whistled behind my back into my ears, the slightly foamy sea surface vibrated before my eyes, and smaller foam bubbles flew across the white water surface. After about five to ten seconds of
CHAPTER VIII
After about five to ten seconds of hard work with my feet in the depths, the heavily loaded, waterlogged sail was finally above my head, hovering about half a meter over the surface of the ocean. In that moment, beneath the pink sail, my vision darkened as if someone had turned down a dimmer switch. For a few seconds, I watched the water cascade off the sail around me, listening to the hissing splash as it hit the white, salty foam below.
My yellow board, adorned with bright green stars from the middle to the nose, bobbed directly in front of my eyes. It gleamed clearly because my back was to the west. I looked far to the east, out over the restless, dark blue ocean and into the approaching pitch-black night.
Alongside the last drops of water splashing from the sail, the loud whistling of the wind filled my ears. I watched the minimal, vibrating ripples on the water in front of me—a great sign for a water start. We windsurfers can always read the strength of the wind from these tiny ripples.
As the last drops fell, I was centered under the sail, both arms fully extended above my head. My left foot slowly swam up from the depths, finding the edge of the board at the tail. Almost simultaneously, I pushed the sail another ten to twenty centimeters higher. Meanwhile, I kicked hard with my right foot beneath the surface, working tirelessly so I wouldn’t sink back into the water under the weight of the damp sail.
As soon as the sail was a bit higher, the tip of the mast pointed toward the sky. In that instant, the wind caught the sail’s surface area, pushing it eastward away from me. Hanging from the boom, my hands automatically stretched even higher while my right foot continued to tread water. Suddenly, I felt pressure under the sole of my left foot resting on the board’s edge. The board began to plane.
Supported by my right foot treading deep underwater, my body rose from the ocean as if an invisible force were pulling me up. It was the “elevator effect.” As my body lifted, my right foot naturally swung forward out of the water, placing itself perfectly between the mast and my foot strap. Perfect. My first water start attempt was a success.
A second later, I slipped my front foot into the strap, carefully hooked into my harness, and was fully planing across the water.
Having survived a water start out in the open ocean without catching a cramp, I felt a massive wave of inner relief. Gliding at high speed over the deep troughs of the waves was suddenly fun again because I was finally on my way back to the beach. Without needing to grip the boom tightly with my fingertips, I flew at near top speed, crossing dark valleys of water and leaving mast-high, roaring waves behind me.
Now, constantly looking forward toward the land, I saw the world in a brighter light. My knees weren’t as weak, and the fear of getting cramps in my fingers had vanished. I could see the small island I was surfing toward, and in the distance, I could spot the beach.
However, because of my premature fall into the water earlier, I realized I was approaching the island from the east side, not from the west side as I had originally planned. Before my fall, I had intended to surf at least two hundred meters further north before turning around. But when I was plunged into the depths, my only thought was to get back on the board. And once on it, my only thought was to get out of the water and back to the shore, back to Mitschiko.
During that entire panic, I hadn’t spared a single second to worry about whether I would get cramps in my fingers or not. I turned my head west, looking over my shoulder. The sun had long since set, and its final glimmer on the ocean surface was gone. The entire sky was gray, while the ocean had turned a deep, dark blue.
I looked straight ahead toward the beach and thought of Mitschiko again. What was she doing now? Was she already in the car? I was starting to worry about her even more. I had simply ventured too far away.
At full speed, I quickly left the mast-high wave troughs behind me. Alongside the hissing rush of my fin slicing through the tail, the thunder of the waves crashing against the barren island grew louder. I surfed past it with a heavy heart, knowing I was on the wrong side. The rocks were barely three meters behind my back.
Crap! I cursed inwardly. Had I known I was going to fall and float weightless in the dark depths like an astronaut, I never would have surfed behind this island. I could have saved myself all this time and effort. But perhaps it had to happen this way so that one day I could say: I floated far from land, completely alone beneath the surface over thousands of meters of depth, and when I surfaced, my board was six meters away. Maybe it happened just so I could write about it someday.
Since I was rounding the island on the wrong side, the next thought shot through my head: I was going to have to tack against the wind two or three more times between the beach and this island—the exact maneuver I had wanted to avoid to save my fingers from cramping. Damn it.
Since there was barely any wind in the middle of this bay when I went out, why would there be strong wind there now? I thought.
If I wanted to avoid tacking repeatedly, I had one other option: I could risk taking a wave without much wind and try to cross the reef barrier that way. But as I approached the middle surf zone, I noticed the wind had indeed lost its strength compared to the open ocean. The reason was the curvature of Malekahana Beach, where the land sweeps into the ocean like a boomerang. The tall trees along that part of the bay blocked the wind from reaching the waters of Laie.
The wind gusts and smaller waves were completely gone from the surface. I suddenly remembered that about twenty minutes ago, while battling my cramps and trying to water start near the channel, I had already noticed the wind dying down. I had barely made it out of the water before the current almost dragged me into the cliffs. Now, looking at the dark, glassy water with no ripples in sight, true fear set in.
If I tried to surf over the black reef barrier in the impact zone without wind, a crash was guaranteed, along with injuries and severe damage to my gear. Wanting to protect my equipment (I didn’t give a second thought to my own body), I immediately decided to turn around before the surf zone and figure out a safer way to the beach. As I initiated the turn, I saw Mitschiko waving, probably relieved that I was finally back.
She had been sitting in the shadows for a long time with her towel wrapped around her. She was likely cold and just glad I was heading in after more than four hours on the open ocean. It was a good thing she didn’t know the predicament I was currently in. It would have only made her more anxious.
I managed a careful jibe on the glassy water just outside the impact zone without falling in and without a cramp. Heading back toward the open ocean and the small, barren island, I dug the inner rail of the board as deep into the water as possible to get a better angle upwind.
Halfway there, I felt something was wrong. I started to overthink. It was strange—even though the wind was stronger out here and I was pressing the rail down hard, I was barely gaining any ground upwind.
Right before reaching the island, I turned around again. Exhausted, hungry, and thirsty, I was just glad I hadn’t fallen in. A crash into the water in my condition, at this time of day, would be catastrophic. Not to mention, the longer I spent in the cold water, the faster my severely dehydrated body would lose its remaining energy. Relieved to have stayed dry, I surfed back toward the beach. But as I neared Laie Bay, I found myself in the exact same spot in front of the surf zone where I had been earlier.
In my attempt to get a better angle upwind, I had wasted at least eight minutes going back and forth for nothing. Crap! I cursed aloud. I was furious with myself. I knew exactly what would happen if I surfed into the bay and hit the impact zone over the black reefs: there would be zero wind. The waves were twice as big as they had been four hours ago when I said goodbye to Mitschiko. Without wind in the surf zone, a crash was inevitable.
Angry, desperate, dehydrated, and starving, I longed for the beach. But whether I liked it or not, it was clear I had to wait. Looking at the shore, I saw Mitschiko waving again. She wanted me out of the water.
My mind raced. What now? If there’s barely any wind here, the surf zone will be dead silent. Oh, God. Dropping the sail into the water here was out of the question. Paddling westward against the current with the sail in the water was impossible; I was too exhausted. Taking the sail apart in the water, laying it on the board, and paddling? With cramps in my fingers imminent, fighting with knots in the cold water would guarantee failure. My bruised, bloody fingertips wouldn’t be able to untie a single wet knot.
There was only one logical option left. Since there were huge waves here on the north side of Laie Bay, my ocean knowledge told me that the west wind had been driving the current eastward all day. Therefore, just around the corner on the east side, there should hardly be any waves. It was a logical conclusion.
I looked at Mitschiko on the beach. Since the sun had dipped below the horizon, the tall trees cast deep shadows over Malekahana Beach. It was getting darker by the minute, and I could barely see her. I wasn’t even sure if she saw me pointing eastward with my hand, or if she understood my gesture. But I trusted my logic. With barely any wind in my sail, I decided to slowly drift eastward, meter by meter, along the beautiful bay. Mitschiko remained seated on the beach to my right.
The last fifty meters of this northeast corner were uninhabited. From the water surface to the top, I only saw black, barren rocks. But at the very edge of the corner, I finally spotted people: two fishermen.
As I approached the island with a hole in it on my left, and the high cliffs with houses on my right, I felt almost no resistance in my sail. Bobbing eastward at a snail’s pace, my board sank so deep that the water reached my knees. Squeezed into this channel between the black rocks, the fear of falling gave me weak, trembling knees again. My eyes were fixed on the long gorge ahead. Through the dried salt streaks on my sail window, I could clearly see the dividing line between day and night in the east. Night had already fallen out there.
There was barely an eight-to-ten-meter gap between the island with the hole on my left and the black cliffs on my right. Caught in the middle with almost no wind, the constant crashing of waves from both sides was deafening. I felt like I was trapped inside a snare drum. Every time a wave smashed against the black lava rocks just four meters to my right, the sound exploded in my ears.
As I slowly drifted past the round hole in the island on my left, I could clearly hear the waves crashing on its opposite side. After every impact, a cloud of white, salty mist blasted through the 1.5-meter hole, spraying my face with wet powder. The weak breeze in my sail carried this white dust forward in slow motion.
The two people I had spotted earlier were indeed fishermen, casting their lines from about eight meters high, directly into my path. I imagined they knew exactly what I was trying to do.
Trapped in the channel, my concentration maxed out. I watched every wave smash against the rocks to my right, sending a waterfall of white foam cascading down. When that hissing, roaring foam hit the ocean and rolled toward me as a meter-high wave, terror set in. Shaking, anticipating a hand cramp at any second, I fought with all my skill to keep my balance and stay on the board.
While these white foam waves thrashed me, my 4.7-meter mast swung wildly, whipping a meter or two from north to south every second. Imagine a yacht anchored without sails in a heavy swell. I was knee-deep in water the whole time. I could clearly hear and feel the hissing, cracking, and popping of every single salty bubble in the foam.
With just a little more wind, this wobbly zone would have been no problem. But right now, my biggest fear was my overworked hands cramping up. As I neared the fishermen, I tried to steer an arc around their fishing lines, which was nearly impossible without wind. This must have been a unique experience for them, too. The nose of my board pushed the first line aside, and my mast tip dragged it eastward for a few meters until it finally slipped past the sail. I was terrified of catching a hook and ripping my sail.
Once the lines were behind me, I only had a few meters left until I reached the northeast corner of Oahu. To my surprise, behind the island with the hole, I discovered another smaller island I hadn’t noticed all day. It was maybe six meters wide. No wonder—every time I surfed in, I was distracted by the houses, the blue sky, or looking at Mitschiko.
Since the wind had been blowing from the west all day, my logic still held: there shouldn’t be any waves on the east side. I was highly hopeful I’d soon reach the shore uninjured. Mitschiko was left behind in the twilight, unable to see me anymore. I had no time to wonder what she was thinking. I was just glad to reach the east side without falling.
But as I rounded the extreme corner of Oahu, I couldn’t see the southern shoreline to my right. I had to surf about ten meters south, behind the rocks where the fishermen stood. If I turned south too sharply behind those eight-meter cliffs, I would lose what little wind I had and fall in. So, I kept heading straight east, involuntarily moving further away from the shore. I hoped that if I got far enough from the rocks, the west wind would reach me again.
Looking through my salt-smeared sail window, the east looked even darker than it was. Beneath the board lay a black abyss. Standing knee-deep in water, wobbling like a beginner, I was filled with dread but grateful for every meter that took me east. The mere thought of drifting away from land at this hour, dehydrated and hungry, made me sick to my stomach.
With great effort, I managed to get about thirty meters east of the fishermen before finally curving right to surf south. After going about ten meters, I craned my neck to look back over my right shoulder.
In a fraction of a second, my eyes widened, and I froze. The view of the shoreline was massive and entirely unexpected. The cliffs where the fishermen stood, and the shore behind them, formed a perfectly straight line cutting from east to west deep inland. When I was near the fishermen, the shore was right there. But after surfing just ten meters south, the shoreline behind me was suddenly 120 to 150 meters away!
I was in absolute shock. When I decided to surf this side ten minutes ago, I thought getting to the beach would be easy. I expected many things, but I never imagined the ocean cutting so deeply inland on this east coast, forming a straight line.
Had I known the landscape looked like this, I would have risked paddling through the surf zone back in Mitschiko’s bay. I would have tried to dismantle the sail in the water, which would have taken fifteen minutes and likely caused severe cramps in my bleeding fingers. I probably would have had to abandon the sail behind the break and let the current wash it in. My board would have been scratched to pieces on the razor-sharp reef, and my sail shredded. But at least I wouldn’t be in this situation.
“Holy shit,” a desperate whisper escaped my lips.
Behind me, all I could see were towering black cliffs. Above them, wild, impenetrable vegetation. Somewhere behind that dense jungle was the Kamehameha Highway, and behind that, the tall mountains. Just like on the north side, the Mormon Temple was nowhere to be seen. With the sun completely gone behind the towering mountains, it was even darker here than at the beach.
And the waves I hadn’t expected? They caught me completely off guard. Paralyzed, I stared at the massive impacts and the scattered white foam crashing against the distant cliffs, asking myself: What do I do now?
If I escaped injury in Mitschiko’s bay, ending up in the impact zone near the cliffs on this east side would be a death sentence. There was no escape here.
Somehow, despite my lost energy and dehydration, I felt a strange absence of fear. Total darkness was only minutes away, and from experience, I knew the wind died down at night. Yet, I was on the brink of despair because I had zero chance of getting out of the water safely. The thought of Mitschiko waiting alone on the beach filled me with guilt and dread.
I lifted my head and looked past the cliffs to the dense vegetation, then higher to the sky over the mountains in the west. The very last remnants of daylight were fading fast. I lowered my head back to the dark ocean surface.
That was when I noticed them. About fifty meters from the shore, at least a dozen dark figures were sitting on the water.
When I first stared at the cliffs in shock, I hadn’t spotted them. In the twilight, wearing black wetsuits against a black ocean with black rocks in the background, they were perfectly camouflaged. Only the white noses of their surfboards sticking out between their legs gave them away.
So that’s why there were no surfers behind the small island today, I realized. As they sat watching for incoming waves, they must have seen me suddenly appear and thought: Where did this guy come from? What is he doing here?
To avoid drifting into the impact zone, I turned my head forward and surfed south at a snail’s pace. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a mound of water rolling toward the surfers. Several of them spun their boards toward the shore. They paddled furiously, stood up, and seconds later, vanished into the dark as they rode the face of the wave. Shortly after, the wave broke, and they emerged from the white water dangerously close to the cliffs. It looked like a contest of who was bravest—or who was closest to death. The remaining surfers sat on the glassy water, waiting for the next set, staring at me in surprise.
Because of the tall mountains blocking the west, the inevitable happened just seconds later: I lost the wind entirely and fell into the water.
Hanging in the dark depths, I clamped my bleeding, aching fingers onto the board and cursed loudly. Desperate, not knowing what to do, I looked across the black, glassy water at the locals and the impact zone threatening to claim me.
This side of the island looked like a towering concrete wall. I couldn’t spot a single exit point where those surfers could possibly get out. For the next few minutes, my gear and I were gently rocked by passing smaller waves, drifting unnoticed toward the shore.
The vibrant colors of this Pacific oasis had completely faded. The sky darkened by the minute, and the first stars began to glimmer. Even though I was in far more danger here than I was half an hour ago in the open ocean, the presence of the locals made me feel marginally safer. At least I had company. Eventually, one of them would paddle home, and I would just follow their path to the shore—even if it meant abandoning my sail to be smashed against the rocks.
I looked south along the coast, my mind drifting to a sandy beach about a mile away where Mitschiko and I had spent time. We had watched fishermen standing knee-deep in the ocean about two hundred meters out. If I could just surf to that spot, I could walk the rest of the way in. It meant leaving Mitschiko waiting even longer while I walked two kilometers back in the dark, but it was my only solution.
The surfers watched me. Hanging onto my board with my chin resting on the deck and my legs dangling in the abyss, I must have looked like a shipwreck survivor clinging to debris.
Tired of the staring contest, I turned my head east into the wall of darkness separating the twilight shore from the night. The water was dead calm.
“I just need a little wind. Just a tiny gust to get out of here,” I pleaded aloud to the universe. “Please, come.”
It didn’t take long. Something brushed the back of my ears. I snapped my head west and saw a violent gust of wind whipping small ripples across the surface between me and the locals. Because I hadn’t wanted to look at the surfers, I missed the wind’s approach and lost my chance to prepare for a water start. Furious, I turned back east and stared into the silent night, thinking of California, 2,600 miles away. Between me and the mainland was nothing but endless, unfathomable depth. The thought gave me goosebumps. Thankfully, I had no idea that reef sharks were currently hunting in these waters. My only conscious problem was the lack of wind.
For the first time, in the eerie calm, I got to watch exactly how a wave is born in the deep. With my chin on the board, my eyes were level with the black water. About fifteen meters away, a minimal black bulge appeared—ten centimeters high and thirty meters long. Behind it, I could clearly see a faded, reddish-dark wall on the horizon, separating the last light of day from the night.
The small bulge rolled toward me in slow motion, growing larger by the second. By the time it was three meters away, it had mutated into a half-meter wave. Looking up at the crest from water level, the wave looked like a black monster silently rising from the depths, ready to devour me.
The current dragged me closer to the locals. A new, massive wave—at least 1.3 meters high and deeply menacing—loomed on the horizon. My instincts screamed that this wave would destroy my gear. I let go of the board, frantically swam toward the mast, and grabbed the tip with both hands. As the wave reared up just two meters away, I shoved the mast and the pink sail straight into the belly of the black monster.
My body was pulled underwater. My eyes snapped shut as the wave crashed over my ears with the force of two buckets of water being dumped on my head. A hissing, roaring hhoooooosh tore past me, filling my ears with the gurgling sound of violent foam.
I surfaced in the middle of the whitewash, gasping and wiping saltwater from my eyes. I froze.
“Kiss my ass!” I yelled.
My pink fin was hanging out of the fin box, dangling horizontally by a tiny two-millimeter metal safety pin. The plastic base that held it securely inside the board was broken.
Shit! When did that happen?
Suddenly, everything made sense. When I was out in the open ocean trying to sail upwind behind the island, I couldn’t hold my course. When I tried to cross the bay near Mitschiko, I couldn’t get a good angle. I had probably been sailing with a broken fin all afternoon! It must have snapped earlier when I jumped off the board to avoid the shallow reef and ended up dragging and falling on the gear for forty-five minutes.
Realizing I was trapped in the impact zone with broken gear, true panic set in. “I need wind!” I screamed into the void. “I need wind!”
Chapter XVII: A Miraculous Gust and the Razor Reef
The current had dragged me straight into the impact zone of the locals. If I felt safe near them before, I was now terrified. One more wave and my gear was finished.
“I need wind!!!” I roared again.
Some of the Hawaiians were already paddling back out from the rocks, heading my way. At least twenty dark figures sat on their boards nearby, staring past me at the next incoming set. One of them called out to me.
“Sorry, I don’t understand!” was the only English phrase my panicked brain could summon.
Turning eastward, I watched the next black swell building. The stars were now brilliant, and the moon began to cast a faint silver reflection on the glassy water. Night had fully arrived.
Knowing the wave was coming, I looked around desperately for any sign of a western breeze. I didn’t realize that being this close to the towering cliffs meant a west wind was physically impossible. I was completely clueless.
“I need wind, or I’m dead!” I muttered. I looked north. My eyes glued themselves to the dark water.
What I saw shocked me. A localized gust of wind—visible as violent, vibrating ripples on the water—was charging straight toward me from the north to the south.
The wind had blown from the west all day. If I wasn’t in a life-or-death situation, I would have stopped to question the physics of it. But I didn’t have time. I don’t believe in God, but considering I had just been wishing I could surf a mile south to the sandy beach, this north wind felt custom-ordered. Only a northern gust could extract me from this impact zone fast enough.
“That’s exactly the gust I need! Now or never!” I yelled.
Standing barefoot in waist-deep water on razor-sharp lava rocks, I prepared for the most crucial beach start of my life. I turned the board forty-five degrees south. I quickly placed my left foot on the board and pushed the sail up to catch the approaching breeze. I kept an eye on the roaring wave building behind me.
When the rippling gust hit, I felt the resistance. The wind pushed the sail south. But the gust was weak; it didn’t have enough power to pull my heavy, waterlogged body out of the ocean. I had to use physics to my advantage.
Holding the boom with my left hand, I let go with my right and grabbed the mast low down, about half a meter above the board. I pushed my left arm high over my head, tilting the sail to an eighty-degree angle. The hissing roar of the wave on my left grew deafening.
As the sail caught the perfect angle, I pulled myself up, applying all my weight to the mast with my bent right arm. The moment my right foot left the sharp reef and touched the board, I let go of the lower mast, instantly grabbed the boom, and pulled the sail tight to balance myself.
I was moving. Powered by a miraculous, minimal northern gust, I glided slowly southward, escaping the crushing jaw of the breaking wave just in time.
“Thank you, God!” I whispered into the dark. “Thank you.”
I rode the dying momentum of the wave southward until I reached deeper water where the waves lost their power to break. The surfers disappeared behind me. My goal was a mile south, but I was moving at a snail’s pace, trying to angle further east to catch the prevailing west wind again.
Total darkness engulfed the shoreline to my right. But to my left, the moon painted a breathtaking silver road across the glassy Pacific. The contrast was staggering.
The silence was absolute. Only the faint plish-plash of water at the tail of my board broke the quiet. I worried about the dangling fin—had it completely fallen off by now? The silence amplified my anxiety.
Suddenly, the wind died entirely. I unhooked from the harness and stood on the board, clinging to the boom with my bleeding fingers. I was floating through a pitch-black void. Searching the shoreline, I finally spotted a tiny, flickering light, like a dying candle in the wilderness. Then a second one appeared. They were signs of life. I knew then I would survive, even if I had to swim the rest of the way.
Krrrrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzz!!!
A horrific scraping sound vibrated through the soles of my feet. I had hit the reef.
I instantly threw the sail and leaped off the board. Landing in twenty centimeters of water, my water-softened feet slammed onto razor-sharp coral. The blinding pain caused me to buckle forward, plunging my hands and raw fingertips directly onto the jagged spikes beneath the surface.
I was on all fours, stranded on a reef at least two hundred meters from shore. The pain was excruciating. I didn’t dare move, trying to spare my shredded hands. Slowly, agonizingly, I pushed myself up.
Looking toward the shore, the two lights had become three. I was surrounded by total darkness, with visibility cut down to four meters. I had no choice but to walk the rest of the way.
To avoid slicing my feet further in the blind depths, I bent down and used my palms to feel the coral underwater before taking a step, crawling like a four-legged animal. I kept my face thirty centimeters above the water, moving in my black wetsuit like a small dinosaur stalking through the dark. Every step felt like walking on hundreds of needles.
It took two agonizing minutes to cover four meters and retrieve my board. I ran my bleeding fingers along the hull to check for damage. It felt smooth—like wet glass. Miraculously, my pink fin was still attached by its metal pin, resting horizontally on the tail. I felt a surge of relief.
I sat on the board to take the weight off my feet and looked out at the ocean. The moon had emerged from the clouds, illuminating the endless Pacific. It was a masterpiece of nature. I was exhausted, thirsty, and in agonizing pain, but sitting there, surrounded by absolute silence and silver water, I forgot everything. I felt an overwhelming sense of peace.
“Beautiful,” I whispered. “It is so beautiful here.”
I thought of Captain James Cook, who had lost his life in these very waters in 1779. It was terrifying yet profoundly mesmerizing to sit over the abyss, knowing Alaska was far to the north, California to the east, and South America to the south. I wanted to soak in this moment forever.
But a dark thought crept into my neck: Mitschiko is waiting.
Guilt washed over me. I hadn’t thought of her once since the survival instinct took over. “Oh God, Mitschiko! What is she doing now?”
I grabbed the mast and began pushing the board through the shallows. “I’m such an idiot. I left her alone in the dark!” I cursed myself.
The walk to shore was agonizing. Sometimes I slipped into deep holes between the reefs, plunging up to my neck and having to swim blindly, dragging the heavy gear. Sometimes I waded through massive, slimy algae beds that wrapped around my arms and legs like spiderwebs. The thick leaves were as sharp as knives near the roots.
After what felt like an eternity of pain, I paused. Over the splashing of the water, I thought I heard a voice.
I froze. I listened to the dark shoreline. Nothing. My mind was playing tricks on me again. I pressed on.
A few minutes later, I heard it clearly. “Helloooooou!”
I stared at the lonely light near the last house, about a hundred meters away. Did something move under the lamp? I dragged my gear forward silently.
“Helloooooou! Do you need help?”
The voice was real. And it was meant for me. My English was terrible, but thanks to my Commodore 64 computer from 1988, I knew exactly what “Help” meant from playing video games.
“Nooo!! Thanks!” I yelled back.
Just knowing someone was waiting on the shore injected new life into my broken body. As I closed the final thirty meters, two tall figures and a child emerged from the bushes. A massive, broad-shouldered man with long hair, looking like Jimi Hendrix, waded into the water.
“Can I help you?” he called out.
Grateful, I detached the mast and pushed the board toward him. He caught it effortlessly and disappeared into the bushes. By the time I dragged the sail the final ten meters to the sand, he was already back to take it from my hands.
Chapter XVIII: The Guardian Angel of Laie
I stepped onto the sand and followed him through the bushes into a grassy courtyard. The single lamp illuminated a small wooden terrace—a Hawaiian lanai.
When the long-haired man turned around to put the sail down, I got a good look at him. He looked wild. I immediately thought of the Mexican bandit Pancho Villa, except this guy was at least a head taller than me. Standing next to him was an old man, and a young boy.
At least they won’t hurt me in front of the kid, my paranoid brain reasoned.
The little boy smiled brightly. The old man smiled. And the wild-looking giant extended his hand with a warm grin.
“I am Ralph!” “My name is Texan,” I replied, exhausting my English immediately. He introduced the old man (the owner of the house) and his young son, Mathew. When Mathew shook my hand, he did it with the firm, proud grip of an adult. It was incredibly endearing.
“Where are you from?” Ralph asked. “I am from Germany.” Wow, my first time in Hawaii and I’m speaking English! A miracle! “Ouuuu! Germany!!” Ralph cheered, pulling me into a massive bear hug. “Good man! Welcome to Hawaii!!” I just hoped he wouldn’t crush my ribs.
Ralph kept talking, and I just shrugged my shoulders, smiling to indicate I understood absolutely nothing. He switched tactics. “Where do you sleep?” “Ooo, sleep! Turtle Bay Hilton,” I managed. “Is your wife with you? Where is she?” “Beach!” I pointed north.
Mathew laughed and told his dad, “His wife is on the beach!”
When Ralph figured out I had a car parked far away, he walked over to an old, rusted gold Toyota Celica. He pulled two straps from the trunk, tossed them through the open windows, and expertly rigged a makeshift roof rack for my board and sail. Then he grabbed a screwdriver and easily undid the tight, wet knots my bloody fingers couldn’t manage.
God sent this man to me, I thought. I couldn’t have walked two miles down a dark highway with a massive board under my arm.
Ralph insisted I get in the car, putting a towel down so my wet wetsuit wouldn’t ruin the seat. He slid the mast through the window, and little Mathew held it securely in the back. With a wave to the old man, we plunged into the wild, overgrown dirt path, the headlights cutting through the jungle until we finally hit the main road.
“Nice board, Texan,” Ralph said as we drove. “Where did you buy?” “I buy board in Berlin.” “Woooww! I never see so nice board!”
In the light of oncoming traffic, I examined Ralph’s face. He was a hulking guy, easily a hundred kilos. I wondered about his heritage. “Where are you from?” I asked. “My father is from Mexico,” Mathew piped up from the back.
Aha! I knew it! Bandolero blood! I thought, my mind instantly flashing to all the Western novels I’d read where Mexicans were portrayed as outlaws. “Oooo, Pancho Villa!” I blurted out. Ralph laughed. “You know Pancho Villa? Pancho Villa was a good man!”
I kept my skepticism to myself, but the warmth and kindness radiating from Ralph and Mathew made my prejudice melt away instantly. We laughed and chatted as best we could.
When we finally rounded the curve near the bus stop where Mitschiko was supposed to be waiting, my heart dropped. We illuminated our red convertible, but the passenger seat was empty.
“Where is your wife, Texan?” Ralph asked, looking concerned. “Don’t know. I think I am crazy! Normal she is here, I not here!” I stammered, panic rising.
I jumped out and ran to the beach, screaming her name into the darkness. Nothing but the roaring waves answered back. Ralph told me to wait by our car while he and Mathew drove down the road to look for her. Standing alone, freezing in my wet suit, hungry and terrified, I watched his taillights disappear.
A few minutes later, the brakes flared in the distance. He had found someone. The Toyota turned around and headed back. I ran toward them. Mitschiko emerged from the darkness, looking frantic.
“Where were you?!” we yelled at each other simultaneously. She had gotten scared waiting and tried to walk through the jungle to find me, getting completely lost in the process. We were both just immensely relieved the other was safe.
After helping me load my gear onto our car, I told Mitschiko to invite Ralph and his family to dinner at Pizza Bob as a thank-you. Ralph said he had to ask his wife first, which I found hilarious—this giant, wild man needed permission from his wife!
We drove to the hotel to quickly shower and change, then met Ralph, his wife Susan (a lovely woman of Chinese descent), and Mathew at Pizza Bob in Haleiwa.
Over a massive family pizza, the story of my rescue finally came to light. Mitschiko translated as Susan and Ralph explained.
“He had the day off,” Susan laughed. “He sat in his armchair all afternoon watching you surf. You kept turning around right in front of our house!”
I was stunned. I hadn’t seen anyone.
“When you disappeared around the east side,” Mitschiko translated for Ralph, “he knew there was no wind and a dangerous reef. He grabbed his binoculars and drove to the corner. He watched you get swept into the impact zone in the dark.”
Then came the kicker.
“He was so worried, he called the Coast Guard helicopter!” Mitschiko said, bursting into laughter.
I nearly choked on my pizza. “He did what?!” I pictured myself hanging off my board in the dark, only to be blinded by a spotlight and hauled up by a rope in front of fifty local surfers. I would have made the front page of the Honolulu newspaper: German Tourist Fished Out of the Surf!
“He was on the phone with them,” Mitschiko continued, wiping tears of laughter. “The rescuers were already in the chopper, yelling at him, ‘Hello? Where is he? Where do we fly?’ But Ralph saw the northern gust hit the water. He watched you perfectly execute a beach start. He told the Coast Guard, ‘Never mind, call the chopper back, he caught a gust and is surfing south!'”
I was deeply moved. I stood up and hugged Ralph, tears of gratitude welling in my eyes. He hadn’t just given me a ride; he had watched over me like a true guardian angel.
After dinner, as we walked back to our cars in the quiet streets of Haleiwa, I felt a twinge of guilt about my initial judgment of Ralph. I told Mitschiko I wanted to confess.
“Texan wants to tell you something, but it’s not very nice,” Mitschiko translated carefully. “Earlier, when we were looking for me and you got back in your car… he memorized your license plate number because he thought you might steal his board and drive away.”
A split second of silence was shattered by an explosive roar of laughter.
Little Mathew, who was standing behind his dad’s seat, threw his arms around Ralph’s neck. He grabbed a fistful of his dad’s long black hair, yanked his head back, and screamed with pure joy.
“See, Dad! I told you! You look like a crook, but you never listen!” Mathew yelled, pulling his dad’s ears. “Cut your hair! Texan thought you were a bandit too!”
“Nooooooooooo!” Ralph bellowed with a booming laugh, his voice echoing into the warm Hawaiian night. “Nooooooooooo!”