Tag Archives: Kohala

Goldilocks’ breaking wave

A wave breaks off the Kohala coast
This week’s posts are in response to the WordPress photo challenge on the theme of ‘evanescent.’

In a previous photo challenge, I posted a photo of a ‘mountain of water.’ I’d been trying to capture waves breaking toward me and though that one didn’t break, it provided a surprising photo.

I mention this because a couple of days ago I was snorkeling and the surf was higher than I expected with visibility in the water consequently poor. I figured I wasn’t going to get any decent fish photos, but I thought I might get a nice surf shot. So I headed toward a deep spot close to shore where I could see the waves breaking toward me. I got to the spot and popped my head out of the water just in time to see a large breaking wave racing my way. It was probably the perfect shot, but sad to say, I lost my nerve. This was a big wave. I swam away, too late of course, and ended up in a froth of whitewater, pushing into my mask and up my nose. And then it was past.

I had to laugh. Truth is, I was never in danger. There’s enough space where I was that even this bigger wave wasn’t going to trouble me. But for that fleeting moment, I had serious doubts.

And this photo? Well, if the ‘mountain of water’ was too small, and my recent encounter too big, this wave was just right.

Mountain of water

A wave looks just like a mountain
Sometimes I get caught up taking a set of photos of certain things. Lately, I’ve been trying to capture waves breaking toward me. On this day the water looked promising, but mostly the waves refused to break.

However, it was a pleasant surprise to find that I’d managed to capture this image. The water has lumped into a pleasing mountain shape and the coral below looks like aspects of its rocky face.

Moon landing

These skydivers appear head for the moon.These skydivers appear to have just missed the moon.

When I saw these skydivers I thought of Kurt Vonnegut’s satirical essay “Excelsior! We’re Going to the Moon! Excelsior!” The connection was really nothing more than the title.

In this case, I imagined the captions as “Coming in for landing,” “Whoa, just missed,” and “Let’s go round again.” I bet this is along the lines of how the moon landings were faked!

The reality is these were part of Upolu Airport’s newest/only economic enterprise, B.I.G Skydiving. On this outing, a couple of solo skydivers had already landed. These two were on a tandem skydive, where a paying customer has the much-needed security of being attached to an experienced skydiver.

For more information about B. I. G. Skydiving go to skydivebig.com.

These skydivers appear to be leaving the moon.

Castaway?

A man harvests opihi off the coast of the Big Island of Hawaii.This lonesome individual, scrambling over a tiny islet, searching for food, appears to be the quintessential castaway. But he’s really collecting opihi and the islet is about a hundred-foot swim to the much larger Big Island.

On a different day with windier conditions, the swim wouldn’t be necessary since the surf could pick a person up and slam them against the cliff with no effort required on their part.