Watching Kai Lenny surf “is slightly heart-stopping,” William Finnegan writes. “You may have seen it on video, but that doesn’t prepare you.”
I was at the lighthouse, looking down on the action. Chumbo was running the ski behind the wave, and when Kai didn’t appear on his board he swerved left toward the turbulence. Kai’s head finally popped up. Chumbo raced to him, slung him onto the rubber sled that rides behind the ski, and gunned it. The next wave was a foamy mess, and Chumbo hit it sideways. The ski went up on its side, and Chumbo tumbled into the water.
Kai’s unusual virtuosity is also a result of making his own luck. As a kid, when the surf wasn’t good, which is often the case on Maui, he would get in the water on some craft that was not a surfboard. When the trade winds revved up, he would switch to another type of board or sail and go faster. As you move out from shore, the wind gets stronger, which means that everything gets rougher and more challenging—plus, no one will know where you are if your gear breaks or you get hurt.
These days, Kai and Sanchez are concentrating on surfing. Sanchez pores over film of Kai’s Pe‘ahi sessions, and they talk about what can be improved. Sanchez is on Kai’s support boat for real-time study and tweaks. On the day I was out at Pe‘ahi, Kai would return to the boat after every couple of waves. He was trying out different sets of fins. They all looked the same to me, but Kai could apparently feel the difference. His tow boards had a set of tiny, sharp permanent fins along the tails.
The event, the Hurley Pro, would take place at Sunset Beach. It’s been years since a C.T.-level contest was held there. A shifty wave that breaks far from shore, Sunset Beach was long considered one of the world’s best big-wave spots, but it’s more complex than it is spine-tingling. Familiarity with its specific reefs and quirks is usually thought to be the key to success.
Kai was acting out these maneuvers when he was interrupted by a visiting nurse bearing bags of yellow fluid, some kind of vitamin I.V. drip. Faster recovery was the idea, or maybe strengthened immune systems. Kai, his photographer, even the owner of the house, Monte , all sat for a dose. I passed, which gave me a chance to look around.means “house” in Hawaiian. “Komodo” means Komodo dragon—the world’s largest lizard, which lives in Indonesia.
Kai was ready to head back to Hale Komodo. He was in training, as always. From Silva’s perspective, though, the night was young. The visiting I.V. nurse was at another table. The restaurant hostess busy escorting parties to their tables was a stone-cold beauty queen. Haleiwa is pretty dead after dark, but Silva had long experience conjuring excitement in sleepy surf towns. I wondered if his frenetic, pseudo-samurai decadence was refreshing to the kid from Spreckelsville.
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