Things came full circle in the past week when word spread that the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational might be run today. The yellow alert was a soft notice that contest officials were eyeing a swell with the potential to meet the mark for running the Eddie, which calls for wave faces at Waimea Bay to consistently reach 40 feet.
It’s a unique threshold that’s tough to hit considering only 10 days in the past 40 years have produced conditions that big – and still clean enough.
“We’ve been looking at a swell for the last few days,” contest director Liam McNamara told local media at the time. “Today, we got an update that this swell does have some good potential to reach that 50-foot height range.” He added, “It’s a matter of the timing of arrival. And also the wind. There’s some questions with the wind and also questions with, is it going to peak out overnight? So we need eight hours of competition from eight to 4 p.m. with 50-foot faces. So it’s a lot to ask for. But last year, we got way more than that.”
That, of course, didn’t pan out and the yellow light turned red earlier this week. Forecasters took note of the conditions, squashing any hopes they’d had for this swell.
Waimea Bay still turned on Friday morning, though. And plenty of people showed up to get a piece. Local news KOHN2 and Salt+Air teamed up to produce a livestream of the paddle session accompanied with broadcast analysts walking fans through the action. The livestream also includes the concurrent action at Pe’ahi.
There’s less than one month left in the 2024 contest window, which ends March 12. If another swell does produce the right conditions we’ll have just our 11th Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational since it first ran in 1984.
