RIP Clyde Aikau: An Interview by Bruce Jenkins

CLYDE AIKAU

As a teenager on O‘ahu’s South Shore, Clyde Aikau watched his older brother, Eddie, surf the giant waves of Waimea Bay and determined he would follow that path. Eddie became the North Shore’s first lifeguard in 1967, Clyde joined him two years later, and they worked together until 1978, when Eddie died in stormy, open-ocean waters during a rescue attempt following the capsizing of the Polynesian voyaging canoe Hōkūleʻa. Clyde had developed into a great big-wave surfer himself, winning the prestigious Duke Kahanamoku Classic at Waimea in 1973, and he was the driving force in creating the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational contest, held only when the surf reaches titanic proportions. In the 2016 Eddie event, helped out of the shorebreak and apparently sidelined with multiple injuries, Clyde, then sixty-six years old, drew upon the crowd’s energy to paddle back out for the second round—using just one arm, due to a disabled shoulder—and catch a final wave. Here he shares some memories that include big-wave legend Jose Angel, who died on a free-dive for black coral in 1976.

The biggest swell: A lot of people don’t remember, but 1969 was the one. By far. We were watching hundred-foot waves breaking three miles out. In Haleiwa they had a roadblock—nobody could go into the North Shore—but me and Eddie were Waimea lifeguards and they let us through. So we get up to Jose’s house to help him move his stuff, because houses were being lifted up and moved across the street, yeah? Eddie, Jose, and me were on the porch of Jose’s house, which is right on the beach, and outside Log Cabins pulls in with a perfect hundred-foot wave. Jose looks at Eddie, tells him, “Let’s go out.” After he said that, I grabbed Eddie. Sorry, but I pushed him in the car and we were gone. I wasn’t gonna take any chances with my bruddah. Not in that surf.

The 1986 Eddie: When Eddie got lost at sea, I didn’t come to the North Shore for five years. I was just a wreck. I didn’t even want to surf, anywhere, so for all those five years, I windsurfed every single day from sunrise to sunset. Diamond Head, Laie, Kailua—I slept and dreamt windsurfing. And thank God I did, because heaven knows what I would have done. I would have jumped off the cliff or something, I don’t know, because me and Eddie were the closest of the closest.

In the winter of 1984–85, when we got a heads-up that Quiksilver wanted to run an Aikau contest, I started going back to the North Shore again, surfing outside reefs all by myself, twenty-five feet. I didn’t want to be around people, but I wanted to ride big waves, and I always felt comfortable wherever I went. When we had that first Eddie at Waimea the following year, I didn’t have a board, but I came across Eddie’s brand-new board that he had built and never used. I borrowed it for the Bay, and it was magic for me. Everybody else was using 8'6"s and 9'6"s and 10'0"s, and I had an 11-foot pintail, and I knew that I could paddle into anything with that.

Waimea that day had a westerly wind and it was kinda blowing onshore, a very difficult place to ride. When the sets would come in, it would look like it was breaking a mile out. And, at that time, a lot of the big-wave surfers never rode the Bay when it was like that. Me and Eddie surfed there a lot, though, and I knew how the waves would break. So when I was in my heat, and the sets would come in, I would scream, “Big set! Big set!” Everybody would be racing out to the ocean, and I would be paddling the other way. And the wave would be poppin’ right where I was.

And, of course, there were these two turtles that inspired me that day. They were together. When I was paddling out, they popped up and looked at me, like they were asking me to follow. And I did. When we got out to where everyone was sitting, these turtles took me about a hundred feet out. Everybody was saying, “Where’s Clyde going?” Well, the set of the day pulled in, and guess who was dropping in. And then, on my next wave, two turtles popped up and I followed ’em again, and the same thing happened. I won the event, and, for me, the whole spirit I felt that day, one of those turtles was Eddie and the other was Jose. No doubt in my mind.

Mark Foo played a big part that year. We had a huge swell a couple of weeks before, but it wasn’t clean enough and [contest director] George Downing didn’t make the call. That’s when Mark said, “Eddie would go”—the first person ever to say that. Then the contest comes down to me and Mark, down to the wire. At the podium they’re calling the fifth-place winner, and fourth place, and by then I was hiding in the bushes [laughs]. Came down to second place, and I was really hiding in the bushes. And they go, “Mark Foo.” I went, Oh, my God. I did the job.

The 1990 Eddie: That’s the year Keone Downing won the event. He and I were in the same second-round heat, and probably the biggest wave of the event pulled through. I paddled for it and was ready to send, but Keone was paddling too, and he yelled at me, like, “I’m going, I’m going!” So I pulled back—and then he pulled back. The very next wave, that was his winning wave. And if you look at it, there’s whitewater going up the face—from the wave before that I was ready to drop into. When it was over, I got third. If I’d taken off on that first wave, I would’ve won the event again. 

The 2016 Eddie: I trained hard for seven months leading up to that one. It was gonna be my last ride, and I wanted to go out with a big bang, you know? Before that day, a swell came in that was just as big. Kelly Slater and Mason Ho and Nathan Fletcher tried to paddle out, and they got wiped out by the shorebreak. George didn’t call it on because there wasn’t much size in the morning, and it wasn’t going to peak until around two o’clock. I showed up at one thirty and paddled right out [laughs]. So I was ready for what I had to go through on contest day.

That will be the last time I surf the Eddie, and I’m pretty sure I’m done making the call on whether it goes or not, but I’m still surfing the Bay. Oh, yeah. In fact, my son just got a big-wave gun for me. I’m ready right now to drop into a couple.

As told to Bruce Jenkins.

Mahalo Uncle Clyde, you will be missed.