Makaha, November 1969, By Malcolm Gault-Williams
"In many ways the winter of '69 was the peak of my life," Greg Noll declared. "I was thirty-two. I had built a successful career of surfing and making surfboards... As usual, we stayed with Henry Preece in Haleiwa. I had stayed at Henry's house nearly every year, since I first met him and Buffalo Keaulana in the fifties, when I had first started coming to the islands. Here I was, fifteen years later, still coming to the Islands each season for the big winter swell.
"Henry's little wood-frame house is about four blocks from the water, where you can hear the surf and feel it when it gets big. About two o'clock one morning, I woke up to the sound of a far-off rumble, rumble, rumble and the rattle of dishes in the kitchen. Half asleep, I thought, 'Hell of a time to run the tanks though.' Every once in a while, the Army would drive its tanks down from Wahiawa, through Haleiwa and out to Kaena Point. I got up to take a whiz, and suddenly realized there were no tanks. It was the rumble of huge surf, breaking from the horizon.
"I started pacing, tried to sleep, paced again. By sunrise my stomach was full of butterflies. My adrenalin was pumping. I was ready to go take a look at Waimea Bay. As soon as Laura and I got there, I could see that the whole North Shore was closed out. Solid whitewater as far as you could see. You can't go out when it gets that big. For the most part, on the very rare occasion when it gets that big, it's done all over the island."
"Laura and I decided to go take a look at Makaha [on the west side] just for the hell of it," continued Noll. "Every once in a while, when the North Shore closes out, Makaha Point still has rideable surf. Less often, when the North Shore closes out, Makaha does this wonderful,  magical thing that I had heard about over the years from older surfers like George Downing and Buzzy Trent. If God sees fit to have that north swell come in at an absolute, perfect direction, Makaha gets unbelievably monstrous swells, as big or bigger than the ones that attack the North Shore, except they're not peak breaks. These Makaha giants peel off from the Point in precise, seemingly endless walls."
"In the fifteen years that I had been coming to the Islands to surf," Noll went on, "I had never seen Makaha do its magic. Sure, I had ridden a number of big Makaha Point days when the waves were breaking twenty feet, but compared to Waimea's hang-on-to-your-balls super-drop, Makaha Point surf just didn't have it for me. I had heard the stories. Supposedly the really huge surf at Makaha only happens about once every eleven or twelve years. I had missed the day in '58 when Buzzy Trent and George Downing rode some monster surf at Makaha. I was convinced that Waimea is where it's at. The ultimate go-for-broke spot. There's not a bigger place on the face of God's earth to ride than Waimea. That's the way it is and always will be, world without end.
"Was I wrong!
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