There was a palpable buzz of excitement throughout the islands of Hawaii in late January 2023. A massive swell was predicted to bring conditions sizable enough for the one-day Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational to be held on January 22 for only the 10th time since it began in 1984. The pro watersports athletes all raced to Oahu for the contest, but Waimea Bay wasn’t the only wave breaking. Another historic day was getting ready to take place on the North Shore of Maui, where Peʻahi, or Jaws, was forecast to unleash bombs of Everest proportions.
Maui-based windsurfer Sarah Hauser caught just one wave that day, but it was the only one that mattered. The monstrous 40-foot wall of water was big enough to improve her own Guinness World Record by four feet. She says sailing it felt like a kamikaze experience. “It was huge and scary and sounded like an explosion when it started breaking,” she recalls. “I couldn’t see the line out, I just felt the blow of the air coming out of the barrel.”
She felt euphoric as she exited the wave, her limbs still electric. In the safety of the channel, she jumped into the water to admire the jade green valley that spits the river out into the ocean - one of her rituals after catching a big wave. There’s no room for distraction when attempting to ride a wave of such consequence. The best athletes can root themselves firmly in the present moment and hone a laser-like focus on the task at hand, no matter what they’re coping with back on land. In Hauser’s case, it was a nightmare scenario she never saw coming.
The night before, Sarah had learned that her husband, windsurfer Casey Hauser, had leukemia. The diagnosis was a complete surprise, uncovered through routine blood work. After spending the night crying together, they woke early and Casey accompanied her to Jaws. That evening the couple would be on a red eye to Los Angeles so he could begin treatment.
Like the waves, life is often unpredictable. “Sometimes it’s best to trust and go with the flow,” says Hauser. “You want the whole ride to be what you’re dreaming of. But you don’t know what’s coming on the third or fourth section of the wave just like you don’t know what the next month or year will bring. All you can do is shift your perspective and see the challenges as an opportunity.”
Born of the Ocean
Hauser, 35, was born in New Caledonia, a tiny French island in the South Pacific. Her parents passed their passion for the ocean and an active lifestyle on to her and her two younger brothers. “They’d take us to remote atolls on our sailboat any chance they had,” she recalls. “As a kid I remember crying so many times thinking I wouldn’t make it back to the beach, this is how it ends for me.” But after riding her first wave at age fifteen, she was hooked. “I wanted to do it all the time,” she says.
Education was equally as important as sport in her household and Hauser went on to earn a master’s degree in engineering by age twenty-three. She celebrated the accomplishment with a trip to Maui, a place she had long yearned to visit. Her trip coincided with the 2012 Aloha Classic, arguably the most prestigious event in the windsurfing world. Hauser hadn’t practiced in five years but on a whim, she entered. “I still held onto this childhood dream of being a pro windsurfer and it felt like the universe was telling me to go for it that day,” she says. And so she did on a big day at Ho’okipa, a legendary windsurfing spot on Maui’s North Shore that can be unforgiving with dangerous rocks and long swims to shore. Her performance that afternoon was impressive enough to attract the attention of sponsors and kickstart her professional watersports career.
Her wave sailing also caught the attention of local windsurfer Casey Hauser. “Her heat had some of the best conditions of the contest that day,” he recalls. “She wasn’t favored since it was her first time sailing Ho’okipa. Where she is from, the waves are all lefts and Ho’okipa is the opposite tack. But you could tell she had innate wave knowledge and timing and absolutely no fear. She made four or five turns on one of the most perfect waves that day. No one does that.”
That trip changed the course of everything for Hauser. She had already committed to a short-term job back in New Caledonia, so she returned to respect the three-month contract, which allowed her to save money and find more sponsors. Then she got back on a plane to Maui. “It felt like a gift from fate on how things would unfold,” she says. “Maui was so mind-blowing for me. In New Caledonia sailing waves required a long travel journey. You had to drive with a boat on a trailer for an hour, launch the boat, ride the boat an hour in the open ocean and arrive where maybe the waves were crap that day. In Maui, there were so many waves right by the side of the road. It felt like an amazing opportunity. And then I met Casey.”
Dream Team
Casey confides he knew Hauser was the one the first time he saw her in the parking lot at Ho’okipa. She barely spoke English and knew no one on Maui. He initiated her into the island’s tight-knit windsurfing circle and says he drunkenly proposed to her multiple times. They were married in March 2014, less than a year after they started dating. Her Instagram handle @hauserlifestyle is a nod to the couple’s approach to tackling life together holistically.
“It was very clear what her dreams were early on,” Casey says. Since the couple got together, they’ve shared the same goal of pursuing how far she can push the sport of wave sailing. That didn’t change after his diagnosis of B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The diagnosis, which required a bone marrow transplant, came as a total surprise, but they both agreed they would not let it derail their life and that Hauser should continue to travel and compete. “I think it was shocking to some people that I wasn’t sitting by his side all day holding his hand,” says Hauser. “But it was important to maintain some semblance of normalcy to continue to chase our dreams and not let his diagnosis let us lose too much as a team. I needed to keep my cup full, and my soul alive.”
The diagnosis prompted Casey to move to Los Angeles full-time for treatment. Hauser learned how to master a balancing act. In November 2023, shortly after the Aloha Classic that same year, in which Hauser placed third, Casey posted on Instagram, “This year has been anything but easy for Sarah…She was relentlessly determined. She never stopped her career obligations…but her days on the water and training were drastically reduced. I think she sailed only five times between February and June. And then only in Peru because she was in L.A. taking care of me through transplant recovery all summer, and then four days in October before the Aloha. For the first time, contests for Sarah were looked at as ‘mini vacations,’ a break from the copious tasks that had become daily life as the spouse of a cancer patient. But she didn’t just find a little peace on these trips, she triumphed. Winning Fiji, 5th in Peru, 3rd in Maui (winning 6 heats in 1 day to come back from last - the 3rd in Maui while being sick and suffering period hell, btw), and nabbing the Big Wave award on the day we flew to mainland to start my treatment.”
The Champion’s Hustle
It’s easy for people to tune into social media and think athletes make a comfortable living simply by executing their sport at the highest level. But Hauser, like many pro action sports athletes, has multiple side hustles so she can continue to compete. A 3X International Windsurfing Tour Champion with two Aloha Classic victories to her name, she is still largely known only to insiders in the sport. The IWT events are heavily European-based, and spots like Sylt and Pozo don’t match her big-wave riding ambitions. “Sarah has the talent and drive to be the best in the world, but she’s always right on the edge of having enough funding,” says Samantha Campbell, owner of Deep Relief // Peak Performance, Maui’s premier training facility for athletes. “The way tours are set up, you have to spend so much money in order to travel to compete. If Sarah was European, it’d be different.”
For a sport that requires tremendous strength, Hauser is petite—barely 5’4” 115 pounds. After earning her first prize money in 2013, she invested in training sessions with Campbell. Honing her land-based training transformed her into a powerhouse in the ocean. It also stoked her nerdy engineering mind that loved learning the science behind things, especially exercise. Campbell doesn’t just train the island’s top athletes, she schools them in why they are performing certain movements or numbers of sets and reps. Hauser was immediately intrigued.
Sports-specific training boosted her genetic gifts. Hauser doubled down on her land-based training and started teaching SUP and mat yoga, Pilates, and HIIT classes at a resort in Wailea. She’d wake at 4:30 a.m. for the 40-minute commute from the North Shore, teach classes and sleep in the lobby bathroom in between sessions, train on the water for four hours and then go to the gym to train on repeat. In 2019, she received her personal training certification and shortly after formed NC6 Training (the name is a nod to her competitive sail number) and started offering windsurf-specific workouts to her clients. Her conditioning program, Ocean Monkey Jedi, is a fusion of both mental and physical conditioning and she teaches some of the windsurfing world’s greats, including 4X world windsurfing champion Marcilio Browne and UK phenom Robby Swift.
Hauser is savvy enough to attract both endemic sponsors like Dakine and Quatro, as well as non endemic partners like software platform Medallia. She also hosts virtual wellness classes for the latter to supplement her income. To juggle it all, she sits down each Sunday, looks at the forecast, and strategically plots her time on the water, gym sessions, recovery, and work commitments. “Flexibility is my greatest ally,” she says.
Pushing Boundaries
Hauser has always cared more about pushing her boundaries in big waves than winning world titles. In 2019, she took her riding to the next level by working with hypnosis and visualization coaches. “I’d feel so much emotion before I went out in big waves,” she says. “For a minute I’d hate it and question everything. Then, I’d go through with it and find joy and awe. I wanted to transform any limited beliefs I had and be clearer in my mind.” The sessions helped her disassociate fear and channel her confidence in the water. That year she set the first Guinness World Record at Jaws, sailing a 36-foot wave.
Over the decades, Hauser’s fearlessness has helped progress the sport of wave sailing. “The girls are getting grittier sailing rail to rail on critical waves,” says Angela Cochran, who won her first world championship the same year Hauser was born. A legend in the sport, Cochran lives in Maui and now serves as a judge for the IWT. She says Hauser’s engineering background comes through in her sailing. “She’s very analytical and will go out and practice one thing over and over and video it and analyze it until she gets it right,” she says. “When it comes to big waves, she is number one or two in my book in both style and power.”
In 2023, Cloudbreak, a heavy wave in Fiji, was added to the IWT tour and Hauser championed the event. It was canceled in 2024, but Hauser hopes the tour will soon bring it back. “A lot of the next generation comes from Europe, and they aren’t as proficient in big waves,” she says. “I think it’s important for the tour to include variety, including waves of consequence.”
Always looking to improve in every aspect of her life, Hauser’s latest focus is motivating others through social media and her blog. “It almost feels selfish to focus on yourself as an athlete,” she says. “We’re also entertainers and should inspire those who watch us.” Girl on Wave, a 2017 documentary about Hauser’s success, was such a hit that director Steven Esparza convinced her to do a follow-up. The sequel will cast a broader lens on the waves of life, including her journey with Casey, who is now leukemia free, but still needs to do tests for the next four years. Produced by EchoHouse Films, the film is due out in 2025. “I hope it reaches beyond the ocean community and inspires anyone dealing with the waves of life,” she says.
Hauser Lifestyle
On her nightstand:
Post Captain, the second historical novel in the Aubrey–Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian,
The Owner-Builder Book by Mark A. Smith and Elaine M. Smith,
The Book of Boundaries by Melissa Urban
What she’s listening to:
The Tara Brach podcast on mindfulness and meditation,
The Headlines by the New York Times,
Just Be Yourself by Julia Mancuso, a former Olympic ski racer
Pet:
Minette, our female tuxedo rescue cat
Go-to healthy meal:
Ratatouille
Favorite place she’s sailed:
I love all the trips I’ve had the opportunity to experience, but I do have a special memory of Fiji. Riding Cloudbreak was an experience that was out of this world.
Super talent besides windsurfing:
I make a pretty good sourdough bread.
