WAIMEA BAY — What it lacked in size, it made up for in ugly.

All along the North Shore Tuesday, and especially at Waimea Bay, the ocean was a roiling mess that was largely unrideable. Waimea was the only place where surfers tested their patience, waiting for long periods for a good wave to rise above the slate-gray and mocha-froth-colored sea.

"It's chunky," said Craig Watson, a 32-year-old surfer who drove in from Hawai'i Kai. "It was rideable, for sure, but definitely there were issues. It was not really clean."

The National Weather Service had forecast wave faces along the North Shore to peak Monday night at 30 to 40 feet. By early afternoon Tuesday the waves had dropped by almost half. And a warm southwest wind often raked them into slop just ahead of rain squalls. Wave faces are forecast to reach 18 feet by Wednesday, the weather service said.

There are better days to go the beach, but Watson said there's a plus side to what he found.

"When it's chunky, there are fewer people out there," he said.

Bodo Van Der Leeden, captain of the city's North Shore lifeguards, said all beaches were closed to swimmers. Lifeguards questioned surfers who headed into the water to be sure they could handle the conditions. For anyone without experience, the waves don't have to resemble five-story buildings to be dangerous.

"For very experienced big-wave surfers, it's not particuarly dangerous, but it's also not particularly enticing," Van Der Leeden said as he stood on the shore of Waimea Bay. "It's not really good surf. For a small window in the morning, it was smooth and reasonably good and quite a few big-wave surfers took advantage of that. But right now it is for die-hards only, people who are really desperate for a moderate sized surf session."

Lifeguards did not need to make any rescues Tuesday, but counted 451 encounters with people they turned back or cautioned.

"These types of days consist of warning people, keeping sightseers back off the wet sand," Van Der Leeden said. "A lot of people like to come down and photograph the larger waves and walk on the wet sand and if a large set comes in they can get washed away and in that case, there could be a drowning very fast."

The only real scare came at 11 a.m. Authorities got a call from someone who saw an old sailboard floating off Chocolates, a surf break in Hale'iwa. Rescue personnel searched for nearly two hours before concluding that it was simply part of the debris swept out to sea by the surf, Van Der Leeden said.

Clark Abbey, a 45-year-old surfer from Kane'ohe, was one of those who arrived early, taking to the surf about 7 a.m. The waves were near peak heights — 20 feet, Hawaiian scale, which the National Weather Service simply doubles when it forecasts wave faces.

"It was unorganized, bumpy, choppy, but the winds were offshore," Abbey said. "I had to be very selective. Some of the waves were unforgiving. You could wipe out, break your board, get held down."

But Keito Matsuoka, a 16-year-old professional surfer from Japan, gave the waves a toothy grin.

"It was fun," he said. "It was challenging. I tried to get some big waves. It was good for practice."

On the Wai'anae Coast, meanwhile, high surf combined with a high tide swept away belongings of some people camping on the beach Monday night.

Reach Mike Gordon at mgordon@honoluluadvertiser.com.