When you think Maui you don’t usually think mountains… but Maui’s famous Haleakala Volcano sits over 3,000m above sea level! Tempratures at the top are freezing, but well worth putting on a hoodie for the amazing views down into the valley below.
Extreme SUP
The wind has been light in the last few days so we have been doing a few touristy things! We checked out Twin Falls which is a chain of waterfalls in this cool jungle, just inland from Jaws.
going for a SUP at Lanes
After the falls we decided to go for a bit of a SUP so we went and grabbed 3 from the shop and went down to Kanaha beach. The swell was really small, the wind was about 10knots onshore so it was quite a solid paddle out to the break! Kanaha is sort of like a massive lagoon with the surf breaking on the outer reef almost 1km from the shore.
James and I got to the break and paddled around for a bit, while Phil who had already demonstrated his awesome paddling skills at Merimbula back in Nov, took a while longer. Finally Phil joined us at the break and promptly fell off his board and broke his leg rope…
He yelled out to me and James to come and get him so we went over, I grabbed Phil and James went to get his board. We reunited the two and were sitting there waiting for Phil to get back on his board...
James said “Oh shit look how massive that turtle is”, I replied “James are you sure that’s a turtle” as James had dropped to his knees and started paddling backwards while Phil levitated out of the water and up onto his board…. We all looked across about 2m from us where a large Tiger shark fin broke the surface “Ohhhhhhhhh f**k” James yelled out to me as he paddled past me!
The tail popped up and the shark did a 180 degree turn on the spot and started coming right towards us… we rafted all 3 SUPs together and freaked out for a sec until we decided to paddle our asses off like never before and make it to the beach! The shark followed us for a few nerve racking moments then decided we didn’t look as tasty as the box of Krispy Cream doughnuts we had just eaten and decided not to attack!
We didn’t spend much time to take in the scenery and paddled our arms off until we hit dry land!
Cracked a cold beer and had a good laugh on the beach about it!
Andrew McFarlane
On a sad note I was shocked to receive a call from Bernie yesterday to tell me that good friend Andrew McFarlane was killed in a bad crash at the Australian Motocross Championships back home in Broadford.
Andrew will be deeply missed and I pass on my sympathy to Nat and the kids. Gone but never forgotten
Ride in Peace Andrew
30/05/77 – 02/05/10
Me, Andrew and Bernie the Sunday before I flew over here
Funny thing that Capt Stabbin' is still paddling like he did back at the Mambo!
ReplyDeleteSad eh?
Wooza