Honolua Bay is no place for pussies. Its hollow, fast tubes are a workout for anyone no matter what size, but when it's large enough to connect across Coconut Grove, through the bay and into the Cove, it becomes a world class high performance break - with plenty of local talent to prove it.

Some 20th century facts about the Bay courtesy of the Encyclopedia of Surfing: 

"Oahu surfers George Downing, Wally Froiseth, and Russ Takaki are often credited as the first to ride Honolua Bay in 1947, but the break was rarely surfed until the early '60s. The Performers, a 1965 surf movie, featured a Honolua sequence filled with glorious six-foot waves, which helped put the break on the map, and Oahu-based surfers were soon beginning to fly over by the dozens when the swell got big enough. Still, a full day of waves might find the lineup nearly empty by late afternoon. "The place just ate surfboards," Hawaiian surfer Barry Kanaiaupuni recalled describing Honolua's cliff-lined shore, which is notorious for destroying lost surfboards. "Fifteen, 20 boards a day sometimes." Maui resident Joseph "Buddy Boy" Kaohi was regarded as the mid-'60s master surfer of Honolua; Oahu surfers Jeff Hakman and Jock Sutherland, who both briefly attended college in Maui in 1967–68, were also standout Honolua riders, as were Les Potts, Gary Birch, and Neil Norris."

The Bay is also well known for its treacherous urchin population, but that has not stopped it from being featured in a large number of well known surf films. It is also known as the birthing spot of the modern Hawaiian short board revolution after a visit by Bob McTavish and Nat Young in late '67 on their radical new v-bottom boards.