Surfers catch monster waves throughout ‘The Eddie’

Jan. 22—Associated Photograph Gallery: Enormous waves draw massive crowd and surfers to ‘The Eddie’ at Waimea Bay

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Editor’s be aware: Watch the livestream of the 2023 Eddie Aikau Massive Wave Invitational above, courtesy surfline.com, and click on right here for curated reside tweets of the competition from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

The Eddie 2023 — Curated tweets by StarAdvertiser

Hundreds of surf followers have descended upon Oahu’s North Shore right now for the tenth working of the Eddie Aikau Massive Wave Invitational surf contest at Waimea Bay.

‘The Eddie’ was final run on Feb. 25, 2016, when Hawaii’s John John Florence gained the competition, which was then referred to as the Quicksilver in Reminiscence of Eddie Aikau.

This yr’s subject will embody about 40 of the world’s high big-wave surfers, and for the primary time, six ladies.

The competition was created in 1984 however has solely been held 9 instances in years when a winter north swell was massive sufficient for the Eddie’s wave-height necessities.

To run the competition, Waimea Bay’s waves should constantly be equal to about 40 toes (about 20 toes Hawaiian-style) with the fitting wind situations.

Clyde Aikau, brother of the legendary waterman and organizer of the competition, stated he was anticipating waves to achieve 50 to 60 toes wave faces right now.

The competition was anticipated to draw greater than 20,000 spectators, however the crowd estimates for the 2016 match had been as excessive as 50,000.

Earlier than daybreak right now, Waimea Bay was already filled with a whole bunch of followers and visitors was slow-moving for miles in both route.

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