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Ocean Dancer
Tiare Lawrence is carrying on a great Hawaiian tradition with purpose and a paddle
By TomTiberio
Photos by Seiji
On a quiet morning in the lineup off Makaha Beach on the west side of Oahu, a 12-foot wall of Pacific Ocean heaved up behind the five-foot-two frame of Hawaiian native and stand-up paddle boarder Tiare Lawrence. And in a split second, the nimble surfer was contemplating something completely out of character: letting the perfect wave roll beneath her.
“I looked at Keone Downing,” says Lawrence of the surfing great, her idol. “He looked at me and said, ‘Go, T! Go! Go!’ ”
Lawrence dug in her paddle, dropped down the face on her longboard, surfed clear of the impact zone, and glided into a euphoria familiar to anyone who’s ever surfed.
Looking back, she says matter-of-factly, “That was by far the best wave of my life.” And it was a ride that helped cement her reputation among Hawaii’s watermen as a true big-wave-riding wonder.
But rather than merely surf bigger and bigger waves, it’s 25-year-old Lawrence’s aspiration to be a complete waterman—or waterwoman—that separates her from the countless other so-called “soul surfers” out there. “Anybody can say they’re a waterman or waterwoman,” says Archie Kalepa, Lawrence’s uncle and the chief of ocean safety and rescue for Maui County. “But to define those words, you not only have to be a good surfer; you gotta be able to dive, you gotta be able to fish, canoe, canoe-surf. You have to be able to do it all on a level that brings credit to the word.” From outrigger-canoe racing to surfing, Lawrence is indeed immersed in the lifestyle. She’s even continued performing hula—the storied Hawaiian custom she picked up at age four—with her hula halau (school) on Oahu. More than anything, Lawrence is intent on living out and passing on the waterman tradition. “Doing all these ocean sports keeps me connected to my culture,” she says. “I do it because it’s part of what I am and who I’d like to be.”
Named after the Tahitian gardenia, Tiare Mahinanapuaku’ulani, or Beautiful Flower of the Moon, inherited her love of the ocean from her Hawaiian-Chinese mother. Lawrence first got into ocean sports during grade school, when she would trail her younger brother and cousins down to the beach to go bodyboarding. She speaks fondly of how, growing up on Maui, the group was nicknamed the Harbor Rats for the amount of time they spent in the waters around Lahaina Harbor. As a young girl, she just assumed she could do anything the boys could—and she did.
Lately, she’s earned a reputation around the islands as a serious contender in stand-up paddle-surfing competitions. Also referred to as “beach boy surfing,” the hybrid sport—in which riders remain upright on oversize boards and use outrigger-style canoe oars to propel themselves—is not new. In fact, its origins go back centuries to the ancient Hawaiians and Polynesians (a point of cultural pride for Lawrence). Recently the sport has seen a resurgence, brought on by guys like big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton and renowned waterman Brian Keaulana, who began using stand-up paddling to train during surfing’s off-season. Since the Hawaiian-born pastime resurfaced, it has spread as far as the UK and Australia, and celebrities—like Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Aniston—have been spotted upright in the surf, paddling like Venetian gondoliers.
On the competitive side, things are still small. There are no women’s divisions, so Lawrence finds herself regularly challenging the men (just like when she was young), sometimes as the only woman in a field of 30 or more paddlers. At a recent contest in Waikiki, she more than held her own, making it to the semifinals.
But Lawrence is quick to point out that stand-up surfing is about much more than competition. “It’s therapeutic,” she says of being on the water. “There’s something about being out in the open ocean—you don’t have to deal with the crowd, or fight for the waves.” As for any personal problems—“whether it’s work, family, friends, or financial,” she says, “those are all land issues.”
Guiding her through this apprenticeship is Keaulana, a family friend and member of one of Hawaii’s surfing dynasties. (His father won the 1960 Makaha International.) Keaulana took Lawrence under his wing after her father died of cancer in 2000, and since then she’s become accepted as the Hanai Keaulana, an informal way of saying that his clan is her adopted family. The designation clears the way for Lawrence to raise her ocean-sports skills much faster than, say, a 20-year-old from Kansas. As a mutual friend of both Keaulana’s and Lawrence’s said of the relationship, it would be “like going out and wanting to be a stockbroker and finding the ultimate mentor on Wall Street.”
But Lawrence owns none of the attitude that might come from such an association. Nor does she exhibit any of the vanity associated with beauty like hers. She’s self-assured, mostly because she’s confident about her skills in the water. “What’s most infectious is her smile and her humility,” says Downing. “And in a way, that’s what riding waves is all about: How long can you hold a smile on your face?”
For Lawrence, who lives her life by the tides, the answer probably depends on the latest surf report. On a recent winter morning, after rain had slammed the Hawaiian coast for several days, she was itching to get back into the water. “Just waiting for the storm to pass,” Lawrence said, “so the surf can get good again.”
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