Oahu Surf Map Set & Surfing Spots Guide with 92 Oahu Surf Breaks includes info & advice on where to surf in Honolulu, North Shore, Pipeline, Waikiki, Sunset Beach

Oahu Surf Map Set & Surfing Spots Guide with 92 Oahu Surf Breaks includes info & advice on where to surf in Honolulu, North Shore, Pipeline, Waikiki, Sunset Beach

Surfing Oahu

Oahu is a place most surfers will want to visit at least once, and if they happen to connect with a solid winter groundswell, they're unlikely to find its reputation lacking.

This ragged-edged island in the tropic zone of the mid-North Pacific is best known to most of the planet's population as the home of Aloha, and the target of a 1941 Japanese bombing run. To the rest of us millions of surfers, it's Ground Central for the modern sport of wave-riding -- birthplace of Duke Kahanamoku, tester of champions, and site of what still ranks as the most high-impact stretch of surfing coast on this earth.

Oahu's unique place in our surfing hearts is due largely to its own place on the globe, just over 2000 nautical miles south and west of Los Angeles, with a 360-degree exposure to virtually the entire swell armory of the Pacific Ocean. Born volcanically 1.2 million years ago from a mid-Pacific hotspot that now lies, still active, off to the southeast of Hawaii, Oahu is also blessed with the complete lack of a continental shelf, which allows any and all swells to hit it with minimal interference. Demographically it is the political and economic heart of the Hawaiian chain and is home to around 700,000 people -- and on some days, you'd swear they were all out surfing.

It's also the original home of the sport as we know it today. People have ridden surf off Oahu for many hundreds of years, long before any European or American had even guessed at surfing's existence. Early visitors to the island -- writers like Mark Twain and Jack London -- described the locals' surfriding in amazed, fanciful language. It was left to Olympic champion swimmer Duke to complete the process in the first two decades of the 20th century, reinforcing the surf image in the minds of people from the USA to Australia to parts of Europe, and even Scandinavia. Later visitors to Oahu, including the Californians and Aussies of the mid-20th century, would reinforce the island's image as surfing's natural homeland with their tales of coconut palms, warm waters, and incredible waves. By the 1970s Oahu -- in the form of its North Shore -- was firmly ensconced in popular surf lore as the final true test of a top surfer's skills and courage, a reputation it carries to this day.