You Are Not Limited To Waves

Surfing in Maui, Hawaii is not limited to the tides, swells or other water conditions. With the Tradewinds blowing steadily almost everyday of the year, grabbing a bit of that and powering yourself over the water is a very attractive way to spend some time.

Lift yourself out of the water by the power of the winds blowing across the Hawaiian islands. Kitesurfing and windsurfing are becoming more popular as the cost of the sporting goods drops in price. Like soccer where all you really need is a ball, surfboarding was the dominant surf sport because of cost and thus it's place in history. The original Hawaiian surfers were not adverse to using the winds but it never really caught on until the gear became light enough to comfortably manage.

Windsurfing is a popular sport along Maui's North Shore. With many different beach entrance points and large areas set aside for wind or kite surfers there is always room for more to join the sport. A novice should really start on the calmer, shallow sandy bottom beaches of the South shores before they are ready to handle the strong winds on the North side of the islands. We have found that afternoon winds can get quite strong and will pull you quite far, very quickly. As we found out one day...

A little side story...

We thought it would be great fun to hook up the kiteboarding kite to our two man kayak and have it pull us along. We only used the training kite which is quite small and won't pull you out of the seat. So starting off at the Cove we got the kite up and piled into the kayak. Soon we have cleared the shore break and out to open sea. We were focused on the whales and what seemed to be flying fish until we looked back and saw that we were quite far out. The wind was blowing us out to Molokini at about 9 miles / hour and we had already gone that much. The wind co-operated and we steered back easily into Wailea and parked ourselves onto the beach. Only then did we find out what was happening back on land...

The people who were on the next beaches did not see the kayak and thought some poor helpless bugger was being pulled out to see. The kite being the small one, looked to those on the beach like we were really far out with a big one. The fire department, helicopters and ambulances were all called out to find us. My brother didn't buy enough carbon credits to neutralize this vacation after that 911 rescue call.

Mahalo