The air was thick with salt, so moist it was almost hard to breathe. It had been like this for days, actually. With all the hype building up to the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational, it seemed possible it wouldn’t run: some people said it would be too big, with the water too foamy for the Jet Skis to gain traction. Others thought the swell would drop. Surely, it couldn’t be 40 feet. The waves would have to double in size as the forecast was predicting. People were camped out on the cliffs for multiple nights leading up to the event. As far as the eye could see were DJ booths, hordes of partiers, canopies, tents, hammocks, trash strewn all over the grass, and the buzz of mopeds speeding up and down Kam highway mixed with thumping EDM music floating out towards the church across the bay.
Sunday morning came around as sure as any Hawaiian day. The precipitation had diminished. There was not a cloud in the sky. The Eddie was not just yellow or green-lit now: it was on. The invitees were stacked: Billy Kemper, Greg Long, Jamie O’Brien, Jojo Roper, Kai Lenny, Kauli Vaast, Luke Shepardson, Lucas Chianca, Mason Ho, Torrey Meister, Bianca Valenti, Justine Dupont, Moana Jones Wong, and many more had joined hands weeks before to celebrate the start of the waiting period. No one knew it would be so soon – just days after the completion of the Vans Pipe Masters, the Eddie Aikau would run, too.
One of the most interesting aspect of the Eddie is the scene: throngs of tourists in straw hats and polarized sunglasses, local families with friends surfing in the contest, photographers with lenses longer than your arm, festies who reek of B.O. and hard alcohol, frothing groms, older people who look back on days before inflatable vests, hardcore surfers waiting hungrily to paddle out the minute the contest ends, and everything in between.
The waves might not have looked huge on the livestream, at least that’s what the gossip was. The swell was picking up steam all morning, and to be fair, it did start off slow. There were lulls in between sets, but that’s not to say that there weren’t giant waves for the taking. Luke Shepardson, for example, scored a huge bomb in the morning that quickly set Instagram ablaze, with people thinking he would take the title again. He also took the full day off this time, instead of surfing between shifts, so the odds were more in his favor.
But the day was early, and the competition was stiff. Around noon, the most stacked heat of the day started: Jake Maki, John John Florence, Matt Bromley, Pete Mel, Moana Jones Wong, Lucas Chianca, and Kauli Vaast were gifted some massive waves. One wave had three surfers all wipe out almost simultaneously. From shore, it didn’t look like much, but then watching surfers airdrop showed how steep it really was. The announcers, mainly Buzzy Kerbox and Barton Lynch, commented that it’s like looking down the face of a building, and knowing you “have to do it, and you have to do it today.” The surfers certainly knew this. With 10 seconds remaining, Lucas Chianca took off on the second wave of a massive set that stretched across the bay, the announcers and crowd screaming, and then immediately after, the Skis rushed in to help the surfers with their broken boards. It was a heat of carnage. Even Jake Maki, the young gun from Hawai’i, had to come into the beach and swap equipment. I’m sure he wasn’t too disappointed, though. Most surfers who walked across the beach after putting on a show were greeted with hearty cheers and applause from those on the sand, the cliffs near the church, and even those in the great green forest stretching up to the highway.
The swell just kept pumping. Originally, the waves were forecast to be biggest around noon, and people slowly started dropping off the beach (especially those who had been there since 6 a.m., 3 a.m., or the night before). But the waves kept growing with each heat, and by round two, Maki once again went on a “potential Eddie wave” but broke his leash. The crowd went wild.
Clyde Aikau claimed the waves this Eddie were 35 feet (Hawaiian) at 1:30 p.m., which is 70 feet in “regularly measured” size. At this point, competitors began getting barreled in the shore break (ala Bruce Irons, 2004). Kauli Vaast started the party, and then Mason Ho had a particularly explosive shorepound, with his board flailing up in the air as he jumped off at the last possible second. It was a crowd-pleaser.
At another point in the afternoon, Ross Clark-Jones came in on a ski with “either a red glove or a bloody hand,” the announcers debated. It was, of course, a bloody hand.
Round 2, Heat 4 was a particularly exciting final heat. Rail grabs, big waves, and wipeouts were all on display. Tyler Larronde went off on a bomb, and Mason Ho and Kai Lenny shared a wave, with Kai Lenny eventually flailing around behind and Ho giving a sort of salute to the fallen. Ultimately, the wave of the day went to Landon McNamara. What looked like a potential closeout turned into the steepest, biggest wave of the heat by a long shot, and Landon proudly threw both hands up to claim it, coming out ahead of the whitewater. This wave earned McNamara 50 points, and his fate was all but sealed. It is said that Eddie Aikau chooses the winner before the contest begins, and if that is the case, Eddie Aikau certainly chose Landon McNamara.
After the last heat, with Nathan Florence getting barreled in the shorebreak as the clock ticked down the final seconds, and with the light slowly fading and clouds moving in, the top nine winners were announced for the 2024 Eddie Aikau Invitational. The wahine were brought on stage first, and the crowd gave them loud cheers as they took a group selfie. Then, Greg Long was brought onstage to accept a photo of Mark Foo, and officially said goodbye to competitive big-wave surfing. Long said, “I was invited 20 years ago as an alternate. It was a dream come true for me. Winning in 2009, I never expected it, and it was my greatest surfing accomplishment. More than that, the greatest accomplishment was taking part in this event for so long. Two decades, some of my greatest memories, and remembering Eddie Aikau and his spirit and his legacy. He was an exemplary human being who cared about his family and gave his life in service of others. That legacy continues to live on.”
Then, with tears in everyone’s eyes, it was time for the finalists to be brought up one by one and accept their checks. With Koa Rothman in ninth, Kai Lenny in eighth, Nathan Florence seventh, Luke Shepardson sixth, Nick Lamb (the only Californian to crack the top nine) in fifth, Jamie O’Brien in fourth, Billy Kemper in third, Mason Ho as runner-up, and Landon McNamara as champion.
McNamara, who grew up surfing the North Shore, where he also spawned his music career, took the accomplishment with few, but significant words. “I felt like I stopped, and I was about to eat crap, but I somehow pulled it off,” he said about his perfect wave. “It’s hard to tell out there how big or gnarly the waves are, but it felt like the gnarliest drop I had in some years out here. I was stoked to make it.”
McNamara also touched on the mana of the competition. “Both of my heats, I had a turtle I was following,” he paused, “They say Eddie picks a winner, and I’m so grateful he picked me.”
