Traffic will be ‘difficult at best’ during ‘Eddie’ surf contest in Waimea

With the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational at Waimea Bay scheduled for Sunday, city officials are bracing for unprecedented traffic on the North Shore.

The contest, which will be held for the first time since 2016 and the 10th time since it launched in the mid-1980s, is expected to draw between 30,000 and 40,000 viewers on Sunday morning, officials said Friday at a news conference. .

“Traffic will be difficult at best,” Honolulu Police Department Capt. Tate Nojima said.

In an attempt to alleviate congestion, the city is adding an early morning bus route, marked “52 Haleiwa- Waimea Bay,” that will run from Ala Moana Center to Waimea, at 4:30, 5, 5 :30 and 6. The trip could take two hours as TheBus will stop at Kalihi Transit Center, Mililani Park and Ride, Wahiawa Armory and Wahiawa Park and Ride. Shuttle services will also run from Haleiwa to Waimea.

Parking lot along the Kamehameha Expressway, from Iliohu Place to Sts. Peter & Paul Mission, will be off-limits from 10 pm today until the event concludes.

Forecasters expect the swell to bring wave faces of 50 to 60 feet, accompanied by offshore winds.

“It’s been a long adventure,” Clyde Aikau, Eddie’s younger brother and co-director of the Eddie Aikau Foundation, said at the news conference. The event almost went ahead earlier this month before unfavorable winds led organizers to cancel it. This time the wind and waves are expected to provide the ideal conditions for large waves. “It goes straight to Waimea Bay,” Clyde said.

This type of swell could occur once every five or six years, according to ocean safety chief John Titchen. “It’s truly sobering to see one of our own honored,” Titchen said, recalling Aikau’s service as a lifeguard. “Today we tell Eddie stories,” he said. In a time before personal watercraft, Titchen said, “He’d just go.”

There will be parking at Waimea Bay, Clyde Aikau said. Parks and Recreation Director Laura Thielen said the department is installing additional restrooms and asked visitors to bag their trash and not use drugs or alcohol, especially given the rough ocean nearby.

Forty elite surfers, 34 men and six women, will compete in the one-day event, which mayor Rick Blangiardi, a former linebacker, described as “the Super Bowl of surfing.”

Live coverage can be viewed on KHII, KHON and Surfline.com. A Parks and Recreation press release advises, “We first encourage visitors to avoid the North Shore and instead enjoy live coverage of the event,” given the number of spectators expected to attend.

Blangiardi said he won’t know the cost of the resources dedicated to the event until after it concludes. “I’m really focused on the value of this rather than the cost,” he said.

Clyde Aikau last sailed on the Eddie in 2016, in what he called his “farewell start”. He is excited to see new surfers participating in the event, such as Maui residents Kai Lenny and Billy Kemper, and Portuguese surfer Nic von Rupp.

In addition to honoring the late Eddie Aikau, a champion big wave surfer and lifeguard who rescued more than 500 people on the North Shore of Oahu, the event is being held in memory of Eddie and Clyde’s brother, Solomon Aikau III, of 74, who died in October, and Roy “China” Uemura, 68, a surf contest organizer and beachboy from Waikiki, who died earlier this month.

In Clyde’s last memory of Eddie surfing Waimea, his brother rode a 12-foot red gun with a pint tail and no rocker, the upward curve on most boards that helps make steep drops. “He had the biggest smile on his face,” Clyde said.