Yokohama: The Country’s Summer Home
*The following is an article from a surf magazine from the 70’s that is no longer in circulation. “Yokohama: The Country’s Summer Home” was written to share some of the magic held by a secluded break on the west-side of Oahu. On a hot Hawaii day in the summer of ‘71, a day in which the country’s summer home played host to surf luminaries Bruce Walker and Buffalo Keaulana, a surfer put to paper his story of a treasured experience at one of Oahu’s gems. Please note that west Oahu is heavily localized and can be a very hazardous place for visiting surfers.
If you’ve ever tried writing an article for a surfing magazine you might remember fiddling with your pen, adjusting the light a million times, or picking your teeth while trying to get a story line together. Eventually the little pictures in your head form into something you can visualize on paper…
Summer days go by like the frames of a moving picture; it’s hard to single one out. Instead, like the frames, they form a whole story, with characters, plots and events recorded within you and titled “Summer.” This frame was like a lot of others taken in Hawaii, hot and slow under a blue canopy. The kind of day for photographer-guest Bruce Walker to hassle you about getting some photos. Hawaii had experienced one of her typical kinds of early summers, fluctuating above and below four feet with brisk trade winds, stiff crowds in the Ala Moana area and a couple weeks total of lousy days.
This day was different. It was the fourth day of a big swell and obviously going to be a good one for waves, but a six o’clock check at Kaikoo’s (near Diamond Head) showed that although there were waves, a combination of wind and swell direction was screwing it up. At this point, friend Bruce brought up something he’d been talking about for a long time… Yokohama!
Yokohama, the perfect place for surf photography; a white sandy beach with large waves breaking close to shore in the azure blue water. Righteous, if it could be trusted. The last reports I had heard about it were unfavorable: waves closing out, flat, rocks along the beach, too much sand. It’s also about the longest distance I could drive from my house in Hawaii Kai, but you have to find out for yourself. Besides, there would be Maile Point for sure. So back home for the essentials and then onto the highway west.
Coming around by Ewa Beach we could see white-water outside. Onto Maile Point where we stopped. It was four to seven feet with great conditions, but the crowd was out of control. We could always come back if Yokohama didn’t make it. Still following the course the sun takes, we stopped a last time at Makaha. It was flat. We then made the last lap onto our destination.
Coming around the bend that leads into the bay is the last big moment… I see four people out scrambling over a set. I involuntarily speed up, cruising through the two big dips in the road which send my tall friend’s head into the car roof. We pull up next to a pile of Primo bottles and leave the car, me to surf and Bruce to film. Walking across the beach we watch an 8 foot set pour through. I paddled outside and waited.
While waiting for a set I took notice of the conditions: blue sky, green hills, white sand, and warm glassy water. The water at Yokohama looks as though someone ground thousands of turquoise stones into silt and then filtered it into the bay. It almost didn’t matter if I caught any waves. To be sitting out in this fantastic water was worth the drive up here… but the sixth sense flashes that a set is outside and I re-adjust my position. My first wave feels unreally neat. Yokohama is the country’s summer home. It’s like a section of Pupukea, only it’s breaking in July. The waves here always look scary and unmakeable but aren’t bad if you drop in and go fast. A set usually consists of three or four waves which can be seen cruising like humpback whales into the bay as you drive around the bend. I’ve often wondered if you drove fast enough and ran down the beach, you could get out and catch the wave you had seen up on the road above. They come sailing in to the shore where they jump up like blue domes when they hit the reef. At this point backwash from the previous wave hits it, not like at Makaha where it collides in explosion, but sort of hitting the wave internally, pumping it up and creating a steep drop. A six-foot wave looks eight to ten feet at Yokohama. A small fin here can be disastrous. A large, deep, single-fin works best in these waves. The waves then break semi to very hollow over the inside table reef. You can usually make it though. Sometimes it wraps around from the other side faster than you can kick out. It’s almost strictly left. Going right takes you over foot-deep coral, though if you take off way outside you can cheat and kick out early. In winter, a north or west swell makes a super hollow right which breaks on the Kaena Point side of the main break. It doesn’t allow much performance, but like Pipeline, Yokohama is beginning to get hers.
On this day Buffalo Keaulana paddled out. He rides the place with confidence, always taking off way behind and on unthinkable waves, and as always, having a good time. After half an hour, he forsook his stick for closer involvement and began riding the same waves with his body. Stanley Saragosa and a couple more of Buffalo’s friends joined him in the water. Yokohama is bodysurfed more often than surfed.
An hour of good waves was halted by a slight onshore wind. The waves were still big and fun, but slaloming your way through the numerous heads belonging to bodysurfers wasn’t. So taking a last wave, I tried something, ate it, and swam in. Bruce was waiting with my half of soggy peanut butter sandwiches and warm fruit. Just the thing after a salty day at the beach.
We finished it all but were still hungry. On to the Makaha drive-in, Maile Point, and eventually the Honolulu International Airport where I watched Bruce board a plane heading back to his home on the East Coast.
Story by John Johnson
Posted by Shaun on Monday, October 13th, 2008 in Surfing.
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