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Posted By: DMcD

Rand: I asked the lifeguard at Waimea that exact question. He answered "seven to ten feet". It took me a moment to realize he was employing the Hawaiian way of measuring wave height which is the size of the back of the wave. In mainland terms, which reckons wave height at the face, the waves would have been fifteen to twenty feet. There were a couple of monster sets at Pipeline that had to be much bigger yet. I have heard that Mavericks gets bigger than Waimea. There are a few spots on Maui that get huger than is humanly possible to paddle out into and which are surfed exclusively by guys that have been towed by jet-ski.

Fred C: Waves weren't consistently big enough to hold the Eddie Aikau but not what I would call tame.

Steve F: Great YouTube video. Not tame, for sure.