We got waves. It started coming in early yesterday morning at about 2-4 ft and then rose to about 6 ft by evening but was totally torn up by the wind. This morning was the best, some 6 ft sets with clean conditions, but still kinda wonky and disorganized, almost like storm surf. All the sand has filled back in from Pipe to Rockys so you gotta go V-Land with the rest of the world, but atleast there is something to ride.

We have been surfing ripples for the past week here in Hawaii and in Tahiti they aren’t getting much better so the Bilabong event at Teaupoo is still waiting to go. I surfed Lanis tonight and it was about a foot which was better than its been.Looks like our Hawaiian guys struggled to advance on the small waves in France at the WLT Oxbow Pro. Bonga Perkins made the semis, but was inched out by local French surfer Antoine Delpero who placed second. Winning the event was Harley Ingleby of Australia. Power surfer Jesse Merle Jones won the Koastalkaos.com Pro in Oceanside today and Sunny Garcia placed 4th putting him at #10 on the WQS tour to requalify next year. Looks like Northshore might pump out a decent swell by the end of the week. stay tuned! 

New Yorkers were reading about Turtle Bay in the Wall Street Journal today. Good to see the whole ordeal finally making it to the forefront. Lingle’s plan has already been authorized and had 5 meetings discussing the details. She has dedicated a whole webpage to keeping folks updated on the issue. http://hawaii.gov/gov/turtlebay Along with Linda Lingle, we can thank surfers like Karen Gallagher of Paumalu Press and Mark Cunningham with Defend Oahu Coalition who have been key players. Its pretty exciting! Today’s surf was not exciting however; FLAT on the Northshore and town was about as small as it gets too. Jamie O Brien who qualified for the wildcard at Teahupoo is probably hoping the South Pacific would get its groove back, but it is not looking too good for the near future. Its looking like he might have to pull out his bag of tricks to advance in the main event where he will come against world champion Mick Fanning and fellow Hawaiian powerhouse Pancho Sullivan in his first heat.

Thats the only word I could think of to explain the look of the Northshore this morning. This swell was predicted to be bigger than it came in. It was just 1-2 occ 3 with marginal conditions and crummy cold windy weather. I guess town had a couple 3 footers last night into today. Looks like Tahiti got the best of their swell for all the trails and everyone is on their way back except wildcard winner Jamie O’Brien. A lot of our guys are in Anglet France for the Oxbow Pro which is one of two events for the World Longboard Tour (WLT ); the waves look small, but hey, they are longboarders anyways.

We got some fun waves in town, but it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Most surfers came early Tuesday morning expecting to see the channel closing out at Bowls when instead it was barely breaking with occasional 5 foot sets every 35-40 minutes. It was fun though. The first day was windy in the morning but very uncrowded at Ala Moana which was really weird. Around 4:30pm a couple solid sets broke near the buoy in the 6 ft range which left surfers thinking the next day was going to really go off. Instead, the waves were about the same with choke guys out. All the regulars; Mike Akima, Ronnie Boy, Kupe, Dewayne and others were joined by some Northshore guys like Kala Alexander, Jason Mags and Kahea Heart not to mention all the groms who cut school. Yes, it was packed. If you check out www.hawaiianwatershots www.hawaiianswell.com or leadingedgeophotos.com you will see several photos with guys taking off, 2 to 3 on a wave.The next day dropped back but still had a couple four footers and hardly anyone out. Today was barely three feet. I have heard rumors that the Northshore was pretty good too on that Wednesday, I left at dark and came home at dark, but it sure was nearly flat the next day.A boat got stuck on the reef at Kewalos today and they were having a really hard time getting it out of there. It looked kinda nuts, but atleast it was far from the surfers.The meeting to “Keep Bowls Parking Free” was kinda weird as usual. You just never really know any of the specifics of whats going on or if by your being there and giving testimony does any good. I usually end up leaving kind of angry, sad and confused. Melissa Ling-Ing and Surfrider put together a proposed plan that everyone agreed to so hopefully they will have heard the voice of the people which was 100% NO on the idea of  privatized parking