By PHIL JARRATT
IN a day of high emotion at Waimea Bay last week, as 40 to 50 foot waves pounded Oahu’s North Shore and the Eddie was called on, one moment stands out, indelible in my memory.
No, it wasn’t Kelly Slater sliding into a huge barrel to honour his recently dead mate Brock Little, nor was it young John John Florence dropping down an epic face in the closing seconds to take the event from Australian veteran Ross Clarke Jones.
It was the sight of a slightly-stooped 66-year-old man calmly paddling his big blue gun surfboard through the channel, over the monster sets almost closing out the bay, and waiting patiently in the line-up for his special wave. His wave for Eddie.
This was Clyde Aikau’s last hurrah as a competitor in the world’s most prestigious big wave surfing event, the Quiksilver In Memory of Eddie Aikau, so named in honour of Clyde’s older brother Eddie, lost in heroic circumstances at sea back in 1978. The Eddie, as it is universally known, can only be held when the wave faces are judged to be more than 25 feet high. In layman’s terms, this is about the equivalent of a four-storey building, say the Sheraton Noosa Resort.
Since 1985, the Eddie has only been run nine times, and Clyde has been in all of them, winning the title in 1986.
A lot of water has washed through Waimea Bay in the 30 years since Clyde held the trophy and the $50,000 cheque aloft, but this sweet, gentle man is still up to the task, as he proved in those monster waves last week, where he gave a dozen years to the next oldest competitor, the merely middle-aged Tom Carroll.
I have to say Clyde Aikau appeared neither sweet nor gentle when I first met him on the North Shore in 1976, the year that the Australian surfers and the media covering them were under the threat of violence from enraged locals for most of the winter. As the clashed escalated and Rabbit Bartholomew took a nasty beating at the hands of a bunch of thugs at Sunset Beach, the brothers Aikau, being the most respected Hawaiian surfers, called a “peace” meeting at the Kuilima Hotel.
I will never forget Eddie and Clyde sitting at a table at the front of the room with a teenaged Mark Richards wedged between them, looking like he might burst into tears at any moment. Eddie told the packed room: “Dis guy, Marks Richard (the Hawaiians always seemed to have a problem putting their s’s in the right place), he’s an Aussie but he comes here and he shows us respeck.” Clyde nodded sagely in agreement. MR’s chin started wobbling. Eddie continued: “You guys gotta show respeck too, ‘cos this is out of our hands now, dere’s bad guys involved and dere’s gonna be bad stuff happen.”
The fear and loathing continued but the Aikau lecture apparently had the desired effect and the violence began to taper off. A few short months later both Eddie and Clyde were invited to compete in the first Stubbies Pro at Burleigh Heads, and Gold Coast mayor Sir Bruce Small held a reception for the visiting surfers. I remember Gold Coast mate Paul Neilsen and I rolling out of there with the Aikaus, and with a good few on board, deciding to continue the party at the Southport Yacht Club.
While their sweat-stained Primo Beer singlets and flip flops raised a few eyebrows at the Yachtie, Clyde and Eddie soon owned the bar, talking story, telling jokes, singing the old Hawaiian songs in perfect harmony. It turned into a wonderful night.
That week was the last time I saw Eddie. In little more than a year he would disappear, presumed drowned, while crewing on the historic twin-hulled Hokule’a, while re-enacting the ancient journeys of the Poynesians between Hawaii and Tahiti. Clyde, who had a degree in sociology from the University of Hawaii, as well as the ability to mix it with da beach boys down at his Waikiki surfboard concession, took on Eddie’s mana and became the spokesman for Hawaiian surfing.
We remained friends over the decades and I was delighted when he accepted my invitation to come to Noosa for the surf festival and lead the ho’okupu opening ceremony. Clyde and his family loved Noosa, and the feeling was reciprocated. He is a man who puts his heart and soul into everything he does, whether it’s riding a monster wave to honour the memory of his much-loved brother, or pushing a small child into that wonderful first wave.
When he took the massive drop at Waimea last week for the last time in competition, I had a tear in my eye.
It’s surf festival time
The Laguna Real Estate Noosa Festival of Surfing gets underway tomorrow afternoon with waterman exhibitions courtesy of Darren Mercer and the Noosa Heads Surf Club, and a special exhibition of the ancient Peruvian caballito de tortura, thought to be the word’s first surfboard. Come on down and enjoy the fun of the first few hours of the “8 days of pure stoke”.
