The best waves of the winter

And the fastest growing and dropping swell I've ever seen.

It happened last Tuesday... hey, it has been a postless week, I got to catch up!
Have a look at the Surfline NW buoy. It started sensing the new swell around midnight of Monday and by noon of Tuesday it was 20 feet, 18 seconds. Never seen anything like that.


This is the weather map of two days before (the 12th).


The storm is not particularly deep. The fetch is not particularly wide and it didn't even become a particularly captured one.
The only thing that would explain such a size, is the relative vicinity to the islands. Usually, in fact, the NW winter swells are generated west of the 180 parallel.
This one was closer, but still far enough to arrive extremely clean.

I timed it perfectly, checking the Pipeline and Laniakea webcams on surfline. I got in the water at Hookipa at 3.30.
The point was shoulder to head high, but the first forerunners sets were just starting to show up.
Nobody was surfing at Lanes (needs to be bigger to be good), so I paddled there. Halfway through the channel, the first big set arrived. I sat on my board and admired the beauty of it. The most beautiful waves I've seen at Hookipa, for sure. Thanks to the offshore wind, from my position I could watch into a deep barrel on my right at the point and into another deep barrel on my left at Lanes. Unreal.

I was stoked just to have seen that. I could have paddled in already...
Instead I did surf Lanes for an hour... or tried to. The rib was still hurting and I couldn't quite paddle fast enough to get into those steep lefts...
I got out of the water just in time... it got bigger and bigger.
Unfortunately all the photos I took are kind of blurry, because it was getting dark. I still put a bunch of them here.

On this one, Alan Cadiz drops in a triple overhead bomb. Looks like a little Jaws... Respect!


Yesterday and today we were blessed with some fun windsurfing conditions. Actually, THEY were blessed... my rib is still sore and I could only have a couple of short sessions. But I took a bunch of photos. Here are yesterday's ones.
And here are today's ones.

These are the three main page deservers.
This one hand tweaked table top is sick. Got to find out who he is. It shouldn't be too difficult... da hell, he's sponsored by Fiat!


KP in a sprayful turn.


Jeff Sutherland in a big aerial.


Last, but not least, don't miss out Sharon's latest hysterical post.