Ghosted
By Michael H. Kew
With its noise and glitz, Garapan could be a mini Honolulu. Sadly Saipan lacks Hawaiian surf steez, stuffed way too far into the WestPac.
The island is an inverted backward letter F with a southpaw of reef dangling off Wing Beach (straight closeouts) which widens above the popular Pau Pau Beach (more closeouts), before it flares two miles from shore—a peninsula resembling the droopy index finger of Dickens’s Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come.
This coral finger cusps Saipan’s oft-polluted Tanapag Harbor, its dreamy blues dotted with Mañagaha, a once-magical 100-acre islet now brutalized. Mobs of tourists daily board to-and-fro ferries including the yellow catamaran operated by Hawaiian-owned Tasi Tours, which manages Mañagaha, a 20-minute ride from Tanapag.
On this catamaran one afternoon were 53 urban Chinese, most in kooky-looking sunwear—rashguards and shorts, big floppy hats, faces slopped white with scented sunscreen. The safety demonstration was given by a Chinese woman who spoke not in Mandarin but in crude English.
As we crept from the dock I approached the captain, a stout Filipino sucking on a cigarette at the helm of the big bright boat.
“Ever see anyone surfing out there?”
“Ah, no. Unless when it’s bad weather then yeah, maybe. Big waves in typhoon. Today it’s flat.”
I asked him about the passengers in rows of white plastic chairs behind us.
“Used to be all Japanese. Sometimes from Russia.”
“Any Americans?”
“Never.”
On Mañagaha, Tasi Tours ran a restaurant, the toilets, picnic pavilions, a gift shop, a dive shop, even a massage/henna tattoo parlor. In tall yellow beach towers sat the lifeguards, like vultures overseeing the volleyball courts, the netted sandy shallows, and squeaky clean, too-fast Maalaea-style rights booming along the reef.
Flat?
Not.
I approached a frizzy-haired lifeguard perched on the fine white sand, a sea of blue-and-yellow umbrellas and plastic lounge chairs. Mandarin wafted from a loudspeaker. A blue buoy barrier faced the turquoise swimming area full of shrieking kids and adults awkwardly splashing about on animal-shaped pool toys.
Relaxed, friendly, he wore a stained white tank top and colorful boardshorts. A neckbeard and a plastic blue hibiscus clip in his black hair. He hailed from Satawan, an atoll in Chuuk. I told him I loved his Federated States of Micronesia.
“Yeah, it’s okay. I like Hawaiʻi better.” He flashed a smile and a shaka. “I live in Honolulu two years.”
“Doing what?”
“Smoking weed. Fucking my girlfriend.”
Another three waves seethed and spit. The swell had arrived suddenly, radically.
“Ever tried surfing?”
“Nah. I like to learn, though.”
“Ever see people surfing here?”
“Yeah, but you need to use boat to go out there. End of reef.”
“Where?”
He pointed left.
“Way down there.”
“Way” was a mile southwest—the “finger”—where swells wrapped and bowled and died in the mile-wide channel abuzz with humanity: parasailing, diving, snorkeling, banana-boating, water-skiing. Here the tradewind blew offshore.
Directly in, fronting American Memorial Park, was Smiling Cove Marina, full of small speedboats. I hoped to find a surf taxi. Time was crucial.
An email I received three months prior from Bruce Bateman of the Northern Marianas tourism office: "There are only about 10 decent surfing days a year on Saipan. We have deep water all around and no surfable waves except for when storm surge and wind from the southwest push some decent, though small, waves over the barrier reef or through a gap down by Sugar Dock. There are waves outside the reef a few additional days a year for those who are not risk-averse. There is no surf 'season.' It comes when it comes."
Bruce didn’t expand when I replied. Typical. Anyway, certainly “not risk-averse,” I was unexpectedly witnessing one of these “few additional days.”
Meanwhile, soundtracked with this surfy roar, Mañagaha’s beach was anted with bored people smoking cigarettes and staring at mobile phones, taking selfies, clicking Like.
As I waited for the return ferry to Tanapag Harbor, Mañagaha’s long dock rumbled with loud 1990s-era jet boats that sounded like they were powered by Chevy C10 motors. The boats were there to collect and return tourists for parasailing lessons and other such watery thrills-for-hire.
The dock was full of impatient, pushy types. We were herded back onto the yellow catamaran. On the short ride back, most passengers continued to stare down at their phones, not at the vignette of blue passing by. Some looked dressed for a night out in Beijing. Many held pool toys. Most smoked cigarettes. Some wore shirts that said i love saipan.
Late that afternoon the huge hallway windows of Hyatt Regency’s Floor 7 afforded me a clear view of the reef. Not a guest and technically trespassing, I’d slipped ‘twixt the closing doors of a courtyard elevator that was filled with loud young pimply Chinese men. Dusk was near, the tide was in, the swell still very much up.
Below lay Micro Beach, a pretty spot crowded with tree silhouettes and hand-holding sunset-gazers. Dozens gathered on the white sand to watch the fading orange pastels. Big ships were anchored in the distance. The scene backdropped by ironwood, mango, pandanus, pine, cocopalms, a carpark and the hotel, its glass windows mirroring the western sky.
Through my binoculars, the waves looked perfect, especially at the reef’s end—the Ghost Finger. I wished to be there. Smiling Cove Marina and its speedboats were just down the road.
Next morning. The tide was falling so I had time to find a boat. But first: to the Hyatt for another Floor 7 surf check.
I snuck into the same elevator which lifted me to the end of the same hallway and its same bird’s-eye view of the same reef finger. I stared for an hour. Then another. The water—more blue than white. A 12-hour swell. What a jerk. The spot had lived up to its goddamned name.
[Plucked from Rainbownesia (2019, Spruce Coast Press). Printed by The Surfer’s Journal on page 131 in vol. 34.3.]
