I love to surf or he’e nalu in Hawaiian, especially early in the morning at day break and late in the afternoon at sunset or beyond until “dark thirty”. Lissette often heads to the shoreline with a flash light to find me and several other equally addicted surfers in pitch dark surfing under moonlight and with flickering tiki torch light emitted by the Mauna Lani Bay hotel or several of the ocean front estates near Makaiwa Bay. At times you can only make out the incoming swell by a slight difference in the grey and black tones in the water or the glint of the moons reflection off the top of the incoming swell. Those sitting deeper and near the reef see it first and begin to whistle their own warning of the incoming wall of water. Dangerous-yes-but there is nothing more thrilling than timing a take off only by the swell hitting the back of your board and the obvious roar of the wave hitting the reef.

Sunsets along the Kohala Coast are incredible also magnified by the beautiful reflection of the red glow against Mauna Kea and the Kohala Mountains in the distance. In the winter magnificent sunsets can be accompanied by breaching whales behind us, yellow tang and eagle rays below us, a snow capped Mauna Kea in front of us and wave upon wave hitting the reef-all for our enjoyment! Thank you God!

My good friend Robert is also from Georgia. There have been more than a few nights surfing where we look at each other and say-“We wouldn’t have been doing this in GEORGIA”-followed by a huge laugh!! I love Georgia but I am very thankful I moved to Hawaii 17 years ago. As we say here-“lucky we live Hawaii”.

I was getting set up on the beach to go surfing one late afternoon and was approached by a couple who asked if I was “Rick”. I told them “yes” and they proceeded to tell me they had a great photo of me surfing at sunset and they wanted to share it with me. They had tracked me down asking the lifeguards at our beach club who is the guy that “surfs the yellow SUP”. Not having a business card in my board shorts to give them, I told them roughly where my office is located in the resort, thanked them for tracking me down and headed out not thinking I would here from them. Sure enough Lee Miller and his wife Merry called a couple weeks later and came over to the office with the photo exhibited here. It turns out Lee is a world class videographer and Merry is a very talented photographer. See their work at hawaiirealmedia.com or call Lee, 808-464-6433. Their specialties include real estate photography and video capture and editing but I’m sure their skill sets extend to other levels of image capture as well. Many thanks again for the photo Merry-when I’m too old to surf I’ll have it to remember my friends, the waves and some of the best time of my life…

Written by Rick Oliver on July 22, 2017
Posted in: Hawaii Life | Tags: photography, surfing