Is there a better way to spend a day? Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Cash Berzolla is going to be a name you hear more and more of. He’s a bit of a wild card; a guy who’ll do something that requires a lot of planning as soon as his interest is piqued. Like doing a foil crossing from Maui to Oahu.
The 20-year-old, who grew up on Maui, has been surfing for basically his entire life. When he was a teen, he decided that he’d give foiling a shot. It quickly became apparent to Cash and anyone watching him that he had something special.
“Cash is what happens when you give a surfboard wings,” Patagonia wrote. “Born and raised on Maui, the young waterman has been surfing his entire life and picked up foiling in his mid-teens. Cash surfs when the waves are clean and the wind is down; when they’re not, his foil turns bumps and chop into a magic carpet ride, allowing him to stay out on the water longer with his friends, be it in the ocean, on a lake, or a river.”
Getting from Maui to Oahu is easy. If you have a plane, anyway. Any other way can be very difficult. You’ve got to navigate a pretty wild ocean and cross two wide channels.
“We’re kind of cheating,” Berzolla said from his truck. “We’re stopping on Molokai and using a car to get to the farthest point towards Oahu and then shooting over.
No one who would consider downwinding on foils from Maui to Oahu, however, would truly consider that “cheating.” The journey is still incredibly challenging, but Cash is a talented guy and the crew he rounded up to join him is too.
After leaving from Honolua Bay at just after 9 a.m., the group was able to find their way onto a series of wind swells in the Pailolo Channel that carried them towards their first destination of Molokai. It’s not a short jaunt — around 25 miles — but when it’s sunny, windy, and you’re doing something fun with a group of good friends… well, it’s hard not to have a grand old time. But it’s also hard not to run into problems.
With about six miles left in the first leg of the attempt, Finn Spencer lost the foil off his mast. Without a follow boat, they were in a bit of a predicament.
“Luckily we all brought parawings,” Berzolla said. “We don’t have a boat escort, so that was our safety protocol. We’re about six miles to the finish, and Finn’s body-dragging, basically, for the next six miles.”
When they finally hit Kaunakakai on Molokai, they were a little over two hours into the trek. Finn headed back to Maui while the rest of the crew decided to continue on to Oahu. After a quick lunch and a little breather, they got back on their way. After paddling out the western side of Molokai, they got out to the wind line, threw out the parasails, and took off on the final stretch across the Kaiwi Channel, a journey of about 40 miles. All in all, they foiled nearly 70 miles, just for the sake of a good time. And at just after 6 p.m., they made their way past the iconic Diamond Head and into Kaimana Beach, marking the end of their trip.
Just another day in the life of Cash Berzolla, and what a day it was.
“I was absolutely cooked at the end of that run,” he said the next day. “I think the total trip time was about eight hours once we reached Oahu, so it was a busy day to say the least… what a session. I can’t believe it worked!”
