Hanalei Bay is on the northern shore of Kaua‘i, the fourth largest of the Hawaiian islands. Picture palm trees and lush river valleys, wild chickens whose feathers are flecked with turquoise. A cobalt ocean pleated by waves, pretty as the mind’s eye can imagine. When I visited, I didn’t see a lick of it. In fact, I saw nothing at all.
Since I’m a blind traveler, my impression of a place doesn’t form from sights. Most often it is given to me by somebody else, someone who knows the sounds, tastes, smells, and sensations specific to wherever I am. You might call her a guide. You might call him a fixer. In the case of Hanalei Bay, that someone was a surfer named Johnny Quinn.
When I asked my hotel’s concierge if she could help me find a surfing partner to be my eyes, worry was her vibe. Fair enough, I thought. Although I’ve been surfing off and on for more than a decade, my week in Hanalei would be my first real go at tackling a wave away from home. On Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where I live, I’m deeply familiar with my mellow beach break. Nevertheless, I’ve broken ribs and ground my face along the ocean floor. I’ve torn both shoulders. I’ve been caught in rip currents and held under waves long enough to get properly spooked. I’d never surfed anywhere else, and Johnny, a California transplant and former bartender at the hotel, had never caught waves with a blind person before. Luckily for me, he was curious and game when the concierge came looking for a volunteer.
The next morning, I waited at Titus Kinimaka’s Hawaiian School of Surfing. It was 8:30 and the sun had barely risen, but already I felt it broiling my pasty Canadian skin. Johnny was a few minutes late, and I was nervous, pacing the porch of the surf school. I wasn’t sure how I would pull this off in a difficult bay I’d never explored, even though I’d have his help. A surfer must visually anticipate the exact spot where a wave will break. Changing tide, current, and wind conditions all complicate the matter. I would have to keep my board and body angled just right to the incoming swell, or the wave would jack me up, tip me over, and spin me around like a washing machine. It’s scary not to see what’s happening. Worse, you can only be talked through it if your head is still above water.
A truck rumbled into the parking lot. “Sorry I’m late,” Johnny said, approaching. “I walked into a cobweb and had to chase a spider with a brush. Want to feel?”
Illustration by Mark Pernice
He gave me a hug hello and put my hand on his head to reveal a long, wild explosion of curls where the spider had tried to homestead. The big hair matched his baritone and broad shoulders, the kind that come from years of scratching over 10- and 20-foot swells. At least now I had an image in my mind of the man I could easily lose in the water.
Hanalei Bay is roughly two miles wide and smiles like a crescent moon. It’s peppered with legendary surf breaks, each different in character and difficulty. Some waves rise over reef walls on the sea bottom. Others, like Pine Trees, groom wedgy sandbars.
We decided to start by the pier at the mouth of the Hanalei River. The waves were small and gentle, because the swell wasn’t as powerful at that moment. We figured I could walk out with my board until I was about chest deep and let Johnny push me into a few, so he could get a feel for working with my blindness.
Right away, the shallows gave Johnny pause. They were dotted with tourists, and I would have to somehow thread my luck between them. A surfboard fin carving through the water is basically a saw blade and would meet people as such. I wore my bright yellow rashguard that declared CAUTION: BLIND SURFER (FOR REAL). Then again, if swimmers could read the words on my chest, it was probably too late. And even if I cleared a path, how would I know when to stop? Too far and I would hit the rocky shore—hard.
The only way to figure it out was to try. I blew the first two waves, unable to catch them. Again and again, Johnny told me when to paddle and when to pop up, only to watch me bury the nose of the board under water or see me topple backward over the tail. Finally, on our fourth attempt, I hopped to my feet as Johnny shouted, “Left, left, left,” his voice receding.
That wave was my first glimpse, or feeling, of the bay’s magic. The unbroken wall of water felt buttery under my board, and fast. It ran silent for 10, 15, 20 seconds—a surfer’s brief eternity—as I raced into the void and braced for impact with someone or something. Then I heard the boil of whitewash around my feet, the wave having collapsed on itself, finished. I casually stepped off my board, and another surfer hooted, “Blind guy smoked the left!”
Within seconds, Johnny was next to me on his board, stoked and giddy, hooting and laughing. He told me I had somehow angled through a group of swimmers as if I could see. We had proof of concept, at least in part, that we could do this together with a little luck. Now all we had to do was devise a system to get me out deeper, and into something bigger.
As water pushes into a bay, it must find its way back out. The force can carve a trench into the sand below you and create a rip current, a fast-moving channel of water that will haul your unsuspecting ass out to sea. Surfers rely on rip currents to carry them into deeper water, but they terrify me. They’re silent, so I can’t hear if I’m caught in one, nor can I see or feel if I’m being dragged away. Johnny could try to call me through the rip, but if I were sucked past him, or lost his voice, I’d be in trouble.
“I wish I could hang onto your elbow,” I shouted over the din of crashing surf. “At least I could follow you through this.”
I was paddling madly into the bay and already lost in a rip. Johnny’s shouts to “go left, more left, now right, straight, no, straighter” were too overwhelming and imprecise against the speed of the ocean. But suddenly, Johnny was in front of me and, inching back on his board, reached his toes to the nose of mine, hooked them on, and guided me in a two-man train out to sea. Not a word was needed until we reached the break a hundred yards out. It was both genius and Herculean on his part. Safaris don’t have better guides.
The next question was how to get me into a wave. Since Johnny couldn’t stand in the water anymore and correct my board’s angle with a push of his hands, I suggested we use a clockface to describe direction. Straight to the beach would be 12 o’clock. A left-peeling wave would mean I needed to aim my board like a hand at 11 o’clock. A right-peeling wave, 1 o’clock. This way Johnny could shout what “time” I was at, and where I needed to be.
I could see a wave for myself, not by looking or listening, but by feeling it in my feet, a description of the water as I carved back and forth.
The swell wasn’t too big, but it was picking up. Bobbing up and down in the water, with no fixed point in the bay to look at, I felt motion sickness bloom behind my eyes. A surfer swooped past doing a trick, standing on his head, or so I was told.
“OK, start paddling, you’re at 10, crank to 1 o’clock,” Johnny said. “This one is yours.”
I could hear a wall of water rushing at me. “But then what do I need to do?” I hollered, trying not to sound panicked. I’d be on my own if I caught it; words wouldn’t carry. With only a few seconds to spare, Johnny looked ahead and divined the unfolding shape of my wave.
It would likely stand up fast and be steep, so I would have to pop up as soon as I felt it.
“Lean a little on your toes when you drop to the bottom,” he said, “and surf to the right. But listen for the sound of the wave crumbling ahead of you,” he added.
That, he imagined, would be my audio cue to change direction. As soon as I felt the wave rebuilding under my tail, I’d swing my weight the other way so that the pocket of peeling energy, where a wave curls in on itself, could catch up and slingshot me as far as possible back to the left. I would zig, then I would zag.
Now I had a picture of my wave in mind. A story, not an elbow, to follow.
“Ready to shreddy?” was Johnny’s last question, with no time to answer.
In my mind’s eye, tourists and chickens alike relaxed on the beach, watching waves stripe the ocean like corduroy. On one they would have spotted a blind guy enacting every move Johnny had anticipated. Finally, in a way, I could see a wave for myself, not by looking or listening, but by feeling it in my feet, a description of the water as I carved back and forth, up and down, my board like a finger on the braille of the bay.
