Tourists showed up with newly purchased boogie boards Monday to test their mettle against the first big North Shore swell of the season — and paid for it.
"The game was on," said senior North Shore lifeguard Mark Dombrowski. "It brought everyone out of the woodwork, and the trend continues of people getting in way over their heads."
The National Weather Service posted a high-surf advisory throughout the day as waves with faces taller than 20 feet pounded the North Shore.
The surf forecast calls for waves to drop in height steadily through today.
But on Monday lifeguards were busy keeping novice swimmers and surfers out of the monster waves.
Although they only made three "tower rescues" and three more using rescue watercraft, lifeguards kept hundreds of potential victims out of the water by making 617 "preventative actions," according to Shayne Enright at the city Department of Emergency Services.
Some tourists even tried to go snorkeling Monday at Shark’s Cove in Pupukea, which can be calmer than a bath in summer but roars to life with big waves in the winter, said Jim Howe, Honolulu ocean safety chief.
The first set of big waves began Saturday and by Sunday morning grew into sets with 12- to 16-foot faces.
The attraction of the first large swell of the young winter season was even more dangerous for unwitting tourists Monday because of unusually thick sand that built up over the calm summer season.
With more sand on the beaches, tourists tended to wander closer to the water, "and then these sets come in," Howe said.
The extra buildup of sand also causes waves to break farther offshore than usual, Howe said.
When even a 10-foot wave comes roaring in closer to shore and collides with a receding wave, the impact can hit surfers and unwary tourists with a punch equal to the bite of a great white shark — or 100,000 pounds per square inch of force, Howe said.
"That’s a pretty dangerous situation," Howe said. "With these big early swells, the conditions are more hazardous."
With the current La Niña weather pattern shifting to an El Niño pattern, lifeguards are bracing for the possibility that the big-wave season of 2012 could be even rougher than normal.
On Sunday, Howe said curious tourists are especially vulnerable to ocean hazards.
"We really want them to go (out) and understand that this is Hawaii, that this is the Super Bowl of surfing, that this is the North Shore — this is not Kansas," he said.
