Blog

WSL World Tour Starts at Pipeline on January 29 Photo By @adventures_ofjess   After an abbreviated 2021 season and a three-month hiatus, the world’s best surfers are dusting off their jerseys this month and getting ready to battle it out for the 2022 world title. While the world tour historically ended in Hawaii, the WSL adopted a new schedule last year that sees the tour start here on Oahu instead. The first event of the season kicks off at Pipeline with a waiting period from January 29 through February 10, and the world’s best are already in town warming up....

  Traditional Tofu in Okinawa and Kalihi Growing up in Okinawa, tofu was a major part of my diet—and it also exposed me to some interesting experiences! I remember visiting some relatives on a small island called Henza that is connected to Okinawa by a land bridge. I stayed there for a few months, and remember that you had to park your car in a neighborhood parking lot, and then walk into the village because the roads were really small the houses were really close. It sort of felt like a National Geographic scene, and it was an interesting place...

How To Find The Perfect Wetsuit and Make It Last   Finding the Right Size Wetsuit The purpose of this article is to help you find the proper wetsuit fitting. Most wetsuits are designed to trap the water inside your suit. So if it’s too big and baggy the warm water trapped in the suit will flush out and fresh cold water will enter. The goal is to have a suit that fits snug, but if the suit is too small, then comfort is compromised. Finding the right size is actually easy if you know what to watch for. If...

 The Firewire Omni   Double-enders have always been a weird little niche in the world of surfboard shapes—almost snowboardish in design, with noses and tails that are difficult to differentiate between. Tomo loves unique, innovative designs, so it’s no surprise that he’d come up with his own version of a double-ender. What is surprising, however, in our world of cookie-cutter shortboards, is how popular the Omni has become. Ever since Slater tore the Surf Ranch apart on the disc-shaped board during the WSL’s test event, the Omni has been a solid staple of the Firewire/Slater Designs quiver. The Omni features...

 Retro Hatchet Longboard Fin When it comes to riding single-fin longboards, there are two main types of fins that are used—pivot fins, which are relatively wide, long, rigid, and upright; and rake fins, which are typically narrower and more flexible, and sweep back to a tapered tip that is well behind the trailing edge of the base of the fin. Both of these fins have their advantages and disadvantages. Pivot fins provide a ton of stability and hold when you are on the front 1/3 of the board, which helps keep the board from spinning out while noseriding. The trade-off...

Manu-O-Ku The White Fairy Tern of Honolulu Photo from nawaiekolu.org I love learning new things, and this week I was fortunate enough to meet a woman who taught me something new about a bird that I’ve been seeing for years! Many of you may have seen the white birds that live around Honolulu and often fly out above the ocean. They move quickly and hang out in the trees in Town, as well as in the lineup at many of our surf spots, such as Kewalos (where I often see them). These birds are called the white fairy tern and are...

Why We Need to Stop Eating Parrot Fish? (Part 2) Photo by Samson Bush We recently released an article about the important role that parrot fish play here in Hawaii, and why it is important that they not be overfished. A lot of people responded to the article, some adding more information about the parrotfish (uhu) and others asking further questions so that they could better understand the issue. We were really stoked to see how interested everyone was in this topic and decided to do a bit more research based on some of the questions that we received. One person noted...

While the North Shore has quieted down for Christmas, joining the rest of us in taking a holiday and providing very little to get anxious about on the current forecast, last week was pumping—and just in time for the HIC Pipe Pro, which was a qualifier both for the Pipe Masters and the 2022 Challenger Series. The entire population of the North Shore had been watching the forecast for the past 10 days, with the first properly NW swell of the season telegraphed for over a week by just about every swell model and surf forecast in existent. But the...

The Attempt to Translate Sperm Whale’s Clicks and Find a Way to Communicate With Them I recently discovered Hakai Magazine, which presents a bunch of interesting content about coastal science. One of the articles that really stood out to me was about project that is working to interpret the sounds made by sperm whales with artificial intelligence and then communicate back to them! Photo Credit to projectceti.org Named Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), the program began in March of 2020, but was inspired by a group of international scientists who were working together at Harvard in 2017. They noticed that the...

Why We Need to Stop Eating Parrot Fish? (Part 2) Photo by Samson Bush We recently released an article about the important role that parrot fish play here in Hawaii, and why it is important that they not be overfished. A lot of people responded to the article, some adding more information about the parrotfish (uhu) and others asking further questions so that they could better understand the issue. We were really stoked to see how interested everyone was in this topic and decided to do a bit more research based on some of the questions that we received. One person noted...

Surf Blog: Rain Swell and Last Contest of the Year PHOTO CREDIT TO WSL It has been a rainy, unruly week here in Hawaii, with a huge, super northerly swell intersecting with raging Kona winds and lots of rain. The entire state has been put on a state of emergency, Big Island had a blizzard conditions at high elevations with upwards of a foot of snow, and a handful of surf spots fired under the rare conditions, while everywhere else was pretty bad. But amongst all the chaos, the World Surf League got down to business, completing the last Challenger...

What A Vektor Fin Can Do On A Surfboard?   There has always been a performance gap between twin fins/quads and thrusters. Twins and quads are fast and loose because the fins on either side of the board create drive and there’s no middle fin dragging through the water and slowing the board down. But the lack of a center fin comes with a sacrifice, because twins and quads are not able to be surfed as aggressively top-to-bottom as thrusters. Because they don’t have the stability of a center fin, they tend to spin out or bog when they are...

Hawaiian South Shore Member of the Month - Erek Riccobuano When and why did you initially get into surfing? I first surfed when I was 16 years old in 1989. I borrowed a board before going on a bike trip with the Boy Scouts, where we rode our bikes from Santa Cruz to Pismo Beach. We had someone’s dad carry our boards and tents and tried to surf a bunch of beaches along the way during our week long trek. It was super cold and I didn’t even know what side to apply the wax but I was hooked and...

Hawaiian South Shore Member of the Month - Ari Fisher When and why did you initially get into surfing? I first leaned to surf as a kid in California from my best friend’s dad who grew up here on Oahu. The joy of spending the morning with family topped off with a hard earned In N’ Out burger, fries, and shake are some of my best memories.    Did you have a time period you laid off from surfing? If so, when and why did you start back up? After a couple of seasons, I ended up moving away for school.  After...

BEN SKINNER/SKINDOG REVIEWS BEN SKINNER SKINDOG BLENDER SURFBOARD REVIEW  BY CARL   What board did you get from Hawaiian South Shore? I got Ben Skinner Blender How was the board?  "I got hit twice, solid kind of hit where you can hear it, NO DINGS ON IT!"  What Fins are you using? (Single Fin) How much do you weight? 5'3" 160 lbs      CHERRY PICKER REVIEW BY BRETT (HwnSouthShore Manager)  "I took our Cherry Picker for the first time. The board is super fun! I caught everything I went for"     CHERRY PICKER REVIEW BY JD Single Fin: Taylor Jensen Pro Flex "Amazing caught every wave that...

SURFER'S FEEDBACK ON THEIR THUNDERBOLT LONGBOARDS BEN SKINNER/SKINDOG REVIEWS   CHERRY PICKER REVIEW BY BRETT (HwnSouthShore Manager)  "I took our Cherry Picker for the first time. The board is super fun! I caught everything I went for"     CHERRY PICKER REVIEW BY JD Single Fin: Taylor Jensen Pro Flex "Amazing caught every wave that I wanted!"     SMOOTHIE SURFBOARD REVIEW  Side: Harley Ingleby Fin  Center: XL Performers "Paddles super easy. It was really good!"       CJ NELSON SURFBOARD REVIEWS APEX SURFBOARD REVIEW  BY JOHN FIN: CJ NELSON 9.5 POWER FLEX (Single Fin) "It's amazing! Super fast super stable at the nose. Very stable and very...

Something to Be Thankful for as Swell Lines Up for Thanksgiving   I don’t know what it is about Thanksgiving, but it seems like we always score a swell on this most grateful of holidays here in Hawaii. It appears that the tradition will continue this year, as the flat spell on the North Shore is forecasted to end on Thursday, November 25—just in time for all the turkey lovers out there. While Oahu has been pretty quiet the past week—Town is practically flat and the North Shore has been in the longboard/foil range—that’s all about to change as Thanksgiving...

The Unspoken Rules of Longboarding Unlike many other sports, surfing doesn’t have official rules that are written down and posted publicly. But despite the lack of official rules and referees, the sport does have a number of unspoken rules and etiquette that should be followed by everyone in the water. Among these rules are a few that specifically apply to longboards. If you are still new to longboarding and wondering why people the other people in the lineup keep giving you stink eye, these rules might just help you figure out what you have been doing wrong! Stick to longboard-friendly...

Kalani Lattanzi Brings Bodysurfing to Peahi and Takes Wave Riding to the Next Level  📸 @martincaprile  In early November, Hawaii saw its first proper XL swell—and it ended up being a great way to kick off the season. Solid 12- to 18-foot waves hammered the North Shore, where the wind was light/variable and conditions were pretty perfect. Meanwhile, over on Maui, the waves were a touch bigger, and the wind also stayed light, which is a rarity on the Valley Isle. This provided a rare opportunity for Kalani Lattanzi, a Brazilian who was born in Hawaii and who has made...