March 2025 (ROTM#195) Sunset Beach, Oahu, Hawaii

The thin blue line.

It’s back to Oahu’s famous North Shore this month – the world famous Sunset Beach. Most of the North Shore is actually one long beach extending about 5 kilometers and encompasses a number of famous surf breaks. Starting from the south there’s Ke Iki Beach (famous for the amazing photos of Clark Little), Log Cabins, Pipeline (Ehukai Beach), Sunset, and Velzyland. These beaches are mostly known for it’s world class surfing – for those who don’t mind scary big waves breaking over scattered volcanic rock outcrops. Generally they’re not great swimming beaches, even in the North American summer months when the waves are much smaller.

One of the things that makes them dangerous are rip currents, but those rip currents are also what allows the surfers to get out the back to catch waves. The rip currents also occupy deeper gaps or channels between the rock outcrops and you can see a very narrow one – the think dark gap between breaking waves about halfway down the beach in this photo. This picture was actually taken from Ehukai Beach (the December 2024 Rip of the Month) looking north during my visit late last year.