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"Who stole Pipeline?" a surfer asked a buddy last week at Ehukai Beach Park. Mother Nature gives
Pipeline a makeoverStrong ocean currents and wind
push sands that reshape the breakBy Tim Ryan
tryan@starbulletin.com"Mother Nature," the friend said.
A not-so-funny thing happened at the Banzai Pipeline last week: It disappeared.
Tons of sand blown by northeast winds and driven by currents from a deposit around Sunset Point not only covered the famous surf spot, but created a quarter-mile-long, 100-yard-wide lagoon and an equally long sandbar, technically called a berm, where Pipeline normally thunders.
The famous lefts of Pipeline were nowhere to be seen. Instead, more than 100 surfers and bodyboarders from Pupukea to Pipeline were riding 2- to 3-foot sandbar rights more reminiscent of California than Hawaii.
"No reason to fear Pipe today," said Sam Conners of Honolulu. "No coral, all sand. Worse that happens on a wipeout is shorts full of sand."
According to Rick Grigg, a University of Hawaii professor of oceanography, there's about a 3-mile stretch of sand "cell" between Sunset Point and Sharks Cove enclosed within an offshore barrier.
That sand circulates between Pipeline and Sunset depending on wave action. "When you get a number of back-to-back swells with a north or northeasterly component, the sand moves to Pipeline," Grigg said. "When the swell is from the northwest or west, it gets deposited on Sunset Beach."
The inside Pipeline reef is mostly fossil limestone rock without much coral because it is battered by heavy winter wave action. That means the sand doesn't harm the environment there, Grigg said.
The good news for Pipeline surfers is that the next series of west swells -- or one big one -- will return the famous spot to its former glory.
"I think I like it better like this," Conners said.
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