Day 20 - Puamana Infiltrated and Observed

 After spending three hours in the ocean, the rest of day I still feel like I am gently rocking. Today I had a guided surfing trip. We started at Ukumehame where the waves were nice and large but close outs (they crash all at once rather than from a peak moving diagonally). I had one spectacular wreck in which the board was ripped right off the leash. Good thing I’m so buoyant.

My instructor was surprised at the big waves and thought some better breaks (not close outs) might be good. So we proceeded further north, where we infiltrated the gated community of Puamana and entered the water at a very sketchy area. All this in the name of some waves that were, um, above my pay grade. I paddled out very far and observed, not wanting to get dashed on a rock by naively picking up the wrong wave. It was beautiful but terrifying and I was not ashamed to nope out of it. One can learn by just watching, right?

The Puamana break from above. The area to the left of the pool is where we entered and hung out. The waves were making all the experienced surfers very happy, so I watched what happy surfers do on happy waves. They carve around and do tricks as you might expect.