Ho’okipa debut, and first time meeting with shark.

Mathias and me at Hookipa Maui 20.10.08

Finally the day was here for me, and for sure a big day in my life. I have windsurfed at Hookipa!! As blogged earlier have already surfed two times at Pavilions. So no finally to day, windsurf at Hookipa. But to be honest consider the condition to day the windsurf there was not extreme at all. Have windsurfed in a lot more extreme condition at another spots around the world or at Kanaha on swell days. But for me the fear of go out at hookipa was(is) more in the head. For years seen the spot on movies, and got the spot described from other and I think sometimes in an exaggerated way. And the respect for the spot have not been smaller when earlier sitting at hookipa on big days looking at all the pro out there, and people get washed on the rocks, taken by the current, swimming people after their gear all over, broken mast, damaged sail and so on. But that’s on swell days. To day it was ordinary wind swell, small friendly ones, on in my experience not much current. Fore sure it was normally less wind near the beach but not at all any problem to get floated with my 76 litre board and with my 5,3 rig tuned up, and wind enough to get powered trough the waves on the way out. And when you are out of the impact zone (if it can be described as a impact zone to day), it was easy to get highness outside. I will in special say thanks to Mathias who forced me and helped me to get out there to day. He had for me a kind of clinic for windsurf at hookipa. First he checked out the condition out there for me. And when I had been out there a while, he told me that it was important to go out again even one more time, perhaps even get washed a bit, to once more learn the head that this is not dangerous, and start to feel the fun of being out there. And for sure the second time my windsurf approach was a lot better and I started to have fun out there. For first time I had the possibility to se the hookipa beach with my own eyes from the water, for me a special and nice feeling.

But my second time out there advanced maybe to a fear factor I do not had in my mind. As a first time at hookipa windsurfer I took turn quite long out of the shore. An out there I thought first I saw a turtle, witch is normal here, so I just went a bit downwind to not hit the “turtle”, but it was not a turtle, for about 30 cm form my board it was a Hammer head shark. I could see the fin and for sure the hammer head. It was for me a quite special experience, newer seen a shark before, only on TV, and now see a shark from my board windsurfing for my first time at hookipa. But it was in real quite small perhaps 1,5 meter long (in my head 5 meter) But to be honest I did not feel any fear with it. I think when my head sended out signal to trigge the fight flight response in mind and body. The head did not have any fight flight response left to send out. It was already used when launched from the beach ☺ I only headed a bit further out without looking back and then took a secure jibe and headed back to the beach. I couldn’t know if this was normal so I reported my shark meeting to the lifeguards. They only wondered how big it was and how far out it was, and they considered this as not so special. And when talking to a Swiss windsurf frontloop skilled woman, she told me that she had seen one to day as well. Ok, so shark is then normal, but for me a nice nature experience.

One more thing I want to say about Hookipa on a day like this, with small wind waves, I had the experience of that there was other people in the same situation as me. Perhaps not first time out there but maybe second or third. So when staying at the beach with the gear tuned up, I experienced the nice and friendly atmosphere between people there, and not different form other windsurfingspot.

Have no not time for more text. Probably no wind tomorrow so we then go for some wave surf again with longboards at Hookipa.