Things I learned in Maui

Reefs in Hawaii are very sharp.

Not to wear my wedding band in the ocean, (gone on the first day)

Tiger Sharks do in fact run the lineup, as I captured live photos of a 10 footer that got us all out of the water very quickly.

When you surf a place called "Shark Pits"... It got the name for a reason...

There really isnt as much surf in HI as everyone says there is.

The surf in AC the week before was Head high and better, but the 85 degree water temps make lack of swell enjoyable.

Maui is a small island.

The road to Hana is beautiful, but gnarly.

Longboarding reefs in Maui is as fun as shredding head high beach break back home.

Its REALLY easy to get Maui Waui on Maui =)

Having no lifeguards, on ANY beaches, ROCKS. ABOSOLUTELY ROCKS!!! Until you hear the awkward "shark sirens" atterting everyone out of the water...

The whole "Angry Local" vibe is not nearly as apparent as everyone tells you. People there are simple and kind, and the place is NOT THAT crowded....

CA is much more crowded that HI

Wetsuits SUCK... REALLY BAD!!!!

Maui is the perfect destination for a honeymoon.

Every golf course on the island is designed to be the easier course on earth, so you always want to come back. THERE WAS ZERO ROUGH, on every course on the island. Just wide open, 300 yard wide fairways... Golfing heaven for golfers who suck.

The Windward side of the island is always 4 feet or so, but unsurfable due to 30 MPH onshores....

Sick trip. Love the place. Still recovering, but I have some picks to post soon. Not much surf action, but the 5-6 shots I took of the tiger shark in the shore break are cool enough...

 

I assume you mean the comments about the surf. Yes, I know that staying 10 days on an island does not give you a clear picture. I spoke with about 100 local surfers the whole time I was there. Guys from CA, guys from Jersey... And they all pretty much agreed that the surf was SICK and EPIC when it is there, but swells are inconsistent, and when they do arrive, you better be ready to drive across the island...

So, again, I loved the place and I enjoyed the long boarding I got into, but everyone told me the same thing "We get like 4 waves all summer here" etc... I saw the potential a ta ton of places. I went to Jaws. I sat there watching it. The place is SICK!!!

But again, the one thing I took from it, is that its not nearly as consistent as people make it out to be.... Everyone says that the South Swells light up Maui in the summer and fall.

I was there for 10 days. There were 2 total days (on the entire island) that were over knee high. There has not been a "flat spell" like that in the history of southern california. Any time of year... I mean, there was NOTHING there. A lake on the south side, a lake on the west side, a lake on the north side... Choppy crossed up short period wind swell on the east side everyday....

Again, if I had scored good surf when I was there, I probably would be saying "Maui is the SICKEST surf on the planet"...

its just a bummer getting skunked.

Like I said, I spent less than 24 hours on the Jersey Shore and surfed Head High beach break alone in Brigantine.... It was sick... Then you travel to the mother land of surfing, and all of the islands were dead flat for 10 days... Im just saying, some of it was bad luck... But ALL the locals were complaining. All I heard was "Yeah, the summers suck on every island every year... You shoulda seen the WINTER tho!!!!" I guess everyone says that. East coast, west coast, HI... You should been here in the winter!!!!

 

Yeah, but I warned her too, so it was kinda funny. We ended up buying this $30 sick silver wave ring down in Lahaina and Ive been rockin it ever since! All is well that ends well.

 

I left Maui 4 days ago. A bunch of locals I met there were just leaving on flights to Tahiti to get what they described as "An Epic Swell". I asked them (5 days ago) when that swell would show in Maui and where. They said about 1.5 weeks. So, if you are going there next week, the locals were saying there is big south swell coming. So, go down South of La Haina on the west side, or anywhere down on the south central coast. Thats where they were saying it will show. The wind is off shore and light down about 5 miles south of La Haina. That was showing the most swell the whole time I was there....

The first few days I was there, there was some windswell wrapping around the North Shore from the Windward side and the Hana side was bigger but super choppy and unsurfable looking, and there were a few nooks and crannies breaking up around where Jaws is.

Word to the wise... there are 7,298,875 people that are all trying to surf SUPs on Maui. The locals were all screaming and bashing Laird and going on rampages about all the mainland transplant SUPers. They are EVERYWHERE... and they CANNOT SURF!....

I was owning the SUPers on a 9footer LB... So, fear not, but im telling you, there are a MILLION of them at every public spot.....

I dont know whats its called, but there is a spot out in the middle of a harbor, arounds some moorings that was going off for a little 3 footer. Sick reef. I will PM you where it was, and how we paddled out. But all the people told me before we went "It is locals only" blah blah... But everyone there was cool. They actually held a Grom contest there in mid week and this little 100 pound kids were boosting off this little 1 footer reef break. it was sick!

Good luck...

Trust me, the surf in Maui was sick... I just got minimal swell the whole 10 days. They had said a couple weeks before it was epic, so you will probably score....

I usually found places with only a couple guys out. So I could follow their lead on paddling out and where the reefs were peaking, but there are tons of breaks with like 100 guys on it that you can just walk right up to.

 

And talk to the dude on the bench on Front St in Lahaina named Mitch (the cubbies hat) or his buddy phoenix!!!! they got that WAUI!

 

See, we golfed in Brigantine in the AM, and we stayed in the penthouse at the Borgata, so when we drove back to check in to the hotel around 2:00pm on Wednesday, August 25th. When we got up, our room faced the ocean, and I could litterally see all the swell on the whole coast. The place that looked the biggest, I mean from 2 miles away, was right over the bridge in Brigantine. It was like the whole 2 miles of beach break right over the bridge by those neiborhoods. So, after watching the surf down in AC, it just didnt look as big. And when I got to the beach in Brigantine, it was bigger than I thought and PERFECT... A tad cold cause I was trunking it and it was a cloudy day.... But it was sick...

I played the worst golf of my life in Brigantine.

Scored epic surf in Brigantine.

Ate a sick dinner and met Bobby Flay in his Steak house at the Borgata.

Played Craps (for the first time ever) with my brother and my friends and we all ended up making like 1500 - $2000 each. And we all started maying $15 bets. We ran the Borgata craps tables for like 5 hours, made a killing... Ended up in some CRAZY, CRAZY strip club down in AC somehwere... Dirty Dirty whores, but we balled out with all the money we made.... Went back to the hotel at like 4am... Played craps again and made like $500 more.

Went to bed...

Woke up... Surfed again... Bounced...

It was an EPIC bachelor party... and I got nothing but love for JERSEY! I have never been, and I lived in MD my whole life... I was impressed with the surf. Impressed with city of AC... I was stoked.... Couldnt have gone better....

And my wedding in MD was picture perfect too. Not a cloud in the sky. On the chesapeake bay... 88 degrees, no humidity... It was PERFECT... I was so worried about weather etc at the end of august, and it was just PERFECT! and then the day after we left for Maui, the hurricanes started hitting the coast... So it was perfect timing.