Buzzy Trent on a Makaha monster. Photo: Bud Browne Film Archives
As told to Anna Trent Moore
My father, Buzzy Trent, loved to surf Makaha Point above all other breaks. Don’t get me wrong. He loved surfing Waimea and Sunset, but he lived to surf Makaha. The most epic day for him was in 1958 when he surfed it with his friend George Downing. These are his words describing it:
At sunrise, I paddled out so stoked and the first guy sitting out there was George Downing. Looking at Makaha is one of the most beautiful things. To be sitting out at that Point, looking toward Kaena Point and seeing these big blue water waves swinging around and starting to hook into Makaha is awesome. They look like great, big trains rolling in there and it’s up to you to pick the right one.
Eight o’clock in the morning it was twenty feet; every set was a clean twenty feet, every wave was totally makeable. There was no chop on the face of the wave. Every wave was perfect.
At nine o’clock the sets starting getting bigger. It climbed up to twenty-five feet. By ten o’clock the bigger sets were thirty plus. It got so big that we couldn’t penetrate into the wave. We would paddle and paddle but the wave would pass us right by. I realized that day that there is a certain size limit a person can physically paddle into.
“It got so big that I didn’t feel like I belonged. I was just a spectator in awe.”
I refused to go in because it was too exciting to be out there and see the waves. It was impossible to catch them. The waves that I did catch gave me some of the worst wipeouts in my life. One wave bounced me off the bottom in forty feet of water. I knew it was forty feet because I dive that area and knew it well. I remember being thrown on the bottom on another wave. I can remember feeling the blue all round me, and looking up I could see the giant roll of white water through the blue. I didn’t care about breathing; I didn’t care about death, and I felt no fear; all I could feel was that moment, that second, and experiencing the wonder and amazement of it all; that I could be at that place and time witnessing the awesomeness of what was happening above me. It just memorized me. Not everyone has the opportunity to experience that. It changes you.
You may master and conquer your fear of surfing big waves but the ocean will always be the victor. There’s no such thing as man conquering the sea. The ocean simply tolerates you.
