Monday night post...

...waaay better than Monday night football!

I got so much stuff to post that I don't know from where to begin. Let's see...

Sunday morning I went to Hookipa to surf. There was no wind in the morning and the windswell was pumping. I went out on my 9.0 and it took me 20 minutes to manage to make it through the channel. The waves were extremely consistent and because of the direction,the channel was often closing out. Exhausted I rested a while in the lineup and eventually tried to catch a few. I didn't succeed.
Two weeks without surfing and I can't catch a damn wave! Surfing is a sport that requires an incredible consistency in the training. It was quite humbling to be reminded in such a way...
Here's the first set of photos.
And here's my pick of the best one. I must have got at least three sets like that on the head when I tried to go through the channel... good timing!


In the afternoon I went to Kanaha and on my longboard with the sail I enjoyed three hours in total solitude on some very fun knee to shoulder high waves. No surfers, no windsurfers, no kitesurfers. No human being around, only turtles. Once again, I was the king of Kanaha. Too bad it's not going to last forever, since longboards like mine will be soon available in all shops...
As I said on the Hot Sails forum, at least I'm stoked that I had Kanaha all for myself for three years.
Like that guy that discovered Mavericks and surfed it alone for 15 years or so...

There's an out of season south swell and so this morning (Monday) I drove to Dumps and it was head high with 15 people out. A bit closing out, nothing epic (Meesh don't risk your neck for it tomorrow), but still... the color of the water in that spot is unreal. And I even caught a few this time!

After the surf session, I drove to Hookipa and I was delighted to see some super clean head to overhead high waves with just a few windsurfers out. The wind wasn't particularly strong and I picked the 87 liters board and the 5.0, which has already become a classic combo. I had two sessions and tons of fun. In between, as usual, I took a bunch of pics.
Here's my pick of the set. It's glenn's backloop #26,313.


Here's a comment that Mistery Bob left on the flickr site: Thanks for catching my good friend, good human being and talented windsurfer Glenn in a nice air shot Giampaolo. He works, lives and breathes windsurfing and they don't come more humble.
I couldn't agree more Bob.
But guys, please don't leave comments on all the sites I use as support. Leave them all here. This is the mother of all sites...

Here's a great little interview with Robby Seeger.
Robby is an amazing waterman and the things he says are always very interesting.
At the end of the interview, I must have got too excited (maybe because of the girls getting ready for the photoshoot) and I stuttered the following words:
Thank you very much Robby Sieberner, a reeeeal real wuderman
I found it so funny that I thought about repeating that a few times in the clip.
You guys in Holland where it's legal, roll one before watching it... and you'll laugh your ass off!


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The Mac users that can't see the video, can see it here.
Lastly, but not leastly, here's an email I sent to the Master forecaster Pat Caldwell. The subject was:"deep appreciation".

Hi Pat,

if there will ever be the world championship of the best swell forecaster, you'll win easy!

I was almost going to bed when I thought:"wait a moment, it's friday night... I got to check Pat!"

Here's a couple of things that I loved about your last forecast (I love them all, independently by the content):

"During the latter time period, marginal gales about 800-1200 nm NNW of Hawaii should push on the kamchatka-generated swell trains, with the combined effect bringing in a moderate surf episode locally..."

AND

"Over the few two decades, there have been three years with short-lived, low-end high, southern hemisphere swells, 1980, 1993, and 2004, respectively. Charts and models suggest 2006 will be added to the list."

My deep appreciation goes to both mother nature and your ability to forecast its behavior.

And after all these compliments, of course, here's a question. :-)

I had a blast today wavesailing over the windswell at Kanaha. Shoulder to head high. Question: how come the summer frequent fresh trade wind episodes don't generate such a high windswell? The colder winter ocean should be even heavier and harder to shape into a swell... I must have read that somewhere.
Is it because of the fact that in winter most likely the windswell adds on top of an existing other swell (from the N or the NW, for example?).

Thank you so much.


And this is what he replied.
Howzit Giampaolo,

Nice to hear from ya. Mahalos for the kind words. Surfing has given me a career and I'm stoked to feed back into the circle.

Epic wave sailing in Kailua on Fri and Sat, 5.0 sail, mast high waves on the outside (big mushburgers). Got the quota, then hit some good S.swell yesterday. Gotta love living Hawaii.

For your question, its primarily the wind speed. The large scale prevailing upstream wind in summer is 18-23 knots with 7-9 feet seas of 6-9 sec periods during the strong events while the recent one was 22-27 knots with 10-13 feet seas and 7-11 second periods. Amplification of wave during shoaling becomes exponentially stronger as wave periods increase from 6 to 10 seconds, so the dominant wave period of this past episode is equally important as the higher seas.

Keep chargin', happy hollowdayz,

Cheers, Pat

PS. As you probvably figured, I'm trying different sites for photos hosting and I would like feedbacks.