Wind creates friction on any surface. But the largest on the planet is the ocean which covers over % of it. So it's no surprise to find the friction between wind and water has amazing results. Hawaii is the best place to test the enormous energy generated by the friction between the two. The folks here are world experts at harnessing it in any way they can. With just a few metres of nylon and a mileanhour breeze, the power of the wind can be turned to a maximumstrength adrenaline buzz. Champion kite surfer Marigold Zoll claims she can get me airborne in a single afternoon. It can't be that difficult it's only a kite, after all. If you double the wind speed, you get four times the force. So add another few miles an hour to the wind speed against my kite now and in theory there'd be enough power to lift the average family car. However, it seems today that's not going to work for me. So we're getting a bigger kite? "Yeah." I'm heavy and we need some air. That's the real reason, isn't it? "That's right." Bit of a ballerina about me out there. Very smooth. "You were on your toes." Am I a bit too smug for a beginner? We'll see how you do on the board. Just as wind pushes against my kite, it also pushes against the water. The result is waves. But getting onto them is not as easy as it looks. A few tiddly Hawaiian waves can eat you in and spit you out, so imagine what the whoppers can do. When you think of the chaotic way that waves are born, it's a wonder there's any order to them. In fact, every ocean has its own unique wave rhythm. You can tell the size of an ocean by the number of times a wave breaks in a single minute. Here in Hawaii, you get about seven crashing ashore every seconds. And over here, , miles to the east, on the far shore of the Online Radio, on the Irish coast, you get... eight waves a minute. But if I go back there , miles... over to the smaller Gulf of Mexico, you count many more waves per minute. Nine... ten... eleven. There are per minute that's five more than in Hawaii. That's because the Online Radio and the Pacific are far bigger oceans than the Gulf of Mexico. The bigger the ocean, the more time and space for the wind to act upon it. The longer the wind blows on a wave, the larger it becomes and the more distant from other waves. So in really big oceans, you get bigger waves and fewer of them about seven every minute on the Pacific coast, compared to on the smaller Gulf of Mexico. If there's no wind, there's no waves. The erratic nature of the wind stabbing at the surface creates waves. The further across the sea the wind blows, the bigger the wave it creates. Wind and water are in constant contact, each bringing friction against each other. This friction literally whips up the ocean, sculpting water into its most beautiful form. But elsewhere in the world, a powerful wind can turn waves into monsters. A big storm on one side of an ocean can push big rollers thousands of miles onto beaches on the other side. But if a massive storm travels across the ocean, its waves can be deadly. So what happens when the winds blow up a real tempest at sea? The answer is a lot closer to home.