A change in landscape

I've mentioned before that my cousin here in Hawaii is a colonel in the United States Army.  He works at a facility on a ridge top in the Koolau foothills, but his family lives in a comfy little condo down on the Hickam Field portion of Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam.  It's been a nice base of operations for me during my vacation in the Aloha State.

For most of this past week, my routine was to go out and paddle in the morning and do some kind of sightseeing in the afternoon.  Besides a trip to Haleiwa on Tuesday, I didn't venture that far from JBPHH and the southern portions of Oahu.  I didn't have to leave the base to paddle in Hickam Harbor on Wednesday, and Ke'ehi Lagoon is a short distance to the east, on the other side of Honolulu International Airport.

Yesterday I decided to go a bit farther afield.  I drove up along the western coast of Oahu, commonly known as "Leeward Oahu" because it's in the lee of the prevailing northeast winds.  Because the Koolau and Waianae Ranges block the moisture that these winds carry, Leeward Oahu is much drier than Windward Oahu, and its slopes lack the lush forests common over on the eastern side of the island.

Leeward Oahu for some reason does not attract tourists the way the rest of the island does, and the coast has much more of a local small-town feel.  In places it's even a bit seedy, and as I drove through the town of Waianae I thought I'd found the Hawaii version of Memphis's Summer Avenue.

I finally found the place I wanted to paddle when I came to Yokohama Beach near the northernmost point of Leeward Oahu.  I put my boat in the water and started paddling toward Kaena Point, a sharp peninsula that forms sort of a "northwest corner" of the island of Oahu.  The closer I got to the point, the more I could feel the northeast wind and the more I could see some downwind runs moving from right to left.  Soon I found myself among some large swells with long periods: the water I was on wasn't rough, but I had the sensation of paddling up an incline toward a distant ridge top.

I finally decided it was time to turn around and try my luck with some downwind surfing.  There weren't really any waves I could just sit on all day long, but there were all kinds of little bumps that I got brief rides on.  I had fun sprinting after each one and seeing what would happen.

The waves were moving at a slight angle away from the shoreline, and it wasn't long before I realized that I was getting pretty far offshore.  So I tore myself away from the surfing and started angling back.  I was never in any doubt that I would make it, but it took what felt like an awfully long time to make progress back to where the car was parked.

The skies were overcast for most of my time on the water, but as I approached the beach the sun started finding gaps in the clouds and illuminated the deep, clear blue seawater beneath my boat.  Paddling water so clear is a novel experience for a guy who spends most of his time on the Mississippi River, and once my boat was back on the beach I just had to dive back in and swim for a few minutes.