Surf’s up at Honolii

A 25-year tradition unique to Hilo was renewed Saturday at Honolii Beach when 10 ambitious surfers looking for more waves and bigger competition participated in the 33rd annual Quiksilver Big Island Toyota Pro-Am Surfing Trials.

The prize at the end, as always, includes a round-trip ticket to Oahu and paid entry fees for a taste of global-level competition.

Winning trips, based on age group for those 17-and-under, included Shayden Pacarro (Puna), Nakoa Kuamoo Mendiola (Hilo), Honu Longley (Hilo) and Ocean Donaldson-Sargis (Kona) in men’s ppen competition; women’s winners were Kahana Delovio (Kona) and Jade Steele (Puna); longboard winners were Cristin Nakoa (Hilo) and Pono Huirakami (Puna); bodyboard winners were Jimmy Hutaff (Puna) and Jiemone Olivia-Munoz (Hilo).

There’s an element of volcanic background to this competition that explains the disruption in continuous competition. The Trials, which qualify winners for world class events on Oahu’s North Shore, were formerly held at Kalpana until Pele sent a flow of lava into the area that completely wiped out the surf and seemed to cancel the Trials.

“We had to take a break and regroup after the lava,” said Stan Lawrence, owner of Orchidland Surf in Hilo and the organizer and promoter of the event that was first held in 1982. “This is, I guess, 25 years we’ve been here at this point, so it has certainly become an all-Hilo event.”

Cars and trucks squeezed their way into available spaces along the narrow road above the beach, their occupants out on the edge of the bank that overlooks the few dozen surfers contesting each other in consistent, steady sets.

The competition opens the door to a larger opportunity for Big Island surfers, with a ticket to the North Shore where the world comes to watch the best.

Lawrence has always maintained there are as many elite surfers on the Big Island, per capita, than there are on Oahu, but opportunities here are more limited. For a time, Kalpana produced tremendous sets that could rival the North Shore, but when the lava erased the waves, it also diminished opportunities for aspiring surfers to be seen.

Honolii Beach isn’t suitable for a full-scale competition 365 days a year, but Lawrence has a good track record for calling it when the surf is right.

“It’s been perfect,” Lawrence said Saturday, “we’ve had steady 4-5-(surf), occasional 6-8-foot, you can’t ask for better than that.”

Asking and receiving are two different things when it comes to planning a competition wholly dependent on the specific surf conditions that day, but after a dark rainy day, Saturday was close to ideal, another assist to Lawrence who has to select the dates.

“It’s better now, a lot easier than it used to be, but you still wonder right up until the day,” Lawrence said. “We used to go on long-range forecasts and what we knew from history, but now we have satellites, buoy reports, all kinds of things that we never had before that we can check.

“You have more information to take into account,” he said, “but you can never totally predict the weather in Hilo.”