A bit of Laird

Yet another good day of surfing Monday morning.

I surfed Lanes for an hour sitting very deep and dropped in quite a few bombs... fun.
Once done, I sat on the bluff and took a few videos of Laird on his standup paddle board.


For some reasons, I'm having trouble visualizing the videos (as well as the slides)on IE. They work with Firefox. Please let me know if it happens to you too. Just in case, here's the url of the Laird video.

In the afternoon a light trade picked up and I sailed lower Kanaha. First with my new 10 footer SUP (love it, but the quad fins don't work for sailing... got to plug a box for a fin in the middle) and then on my floaty custom SOS when the wind picked up a notch more.
5.5, sometimes slogging, sometimes planing... waves up to head high... very, very fun conditions. I love these conditions: sometimes I go upwind and ride the wave goofy stance backwinding, sometimes I go downwind, but still mostly on the face of the wave, more like surfing rather than windsurfing.
Two hours and a half before I got really tired and hungry.
Derigged everything, ate lunch, went to do a few errands, stopped by Kanaha Kai, drank a beer with Tom (who kindly fixed my 4.7), checked out all the new Starboard (longboards and shortboards) that they just received.
"Hey Juan, that Evo 90 looks pretty good doesn't it?"
"It's in the rental fleet... you can try if you want!"

I just cannot say no to an opportunity of trying a new board... so, after two intense sessions and a beer, at 4.30 I was back in the water for another really fun sesh.
I liked the board, it turns really good to be that floaty, you just have to adapt your style and don't try to do super snappy turns like if you were on a smaller board...
Wonna try it? Rent it a Kanaha Kai. They have a bunch of Kombat and Tabou too...

What else... forecast.
What I wrote yesterday is unfortunately confirmed. The wind is going to be nuclear towards the end of the week... I really hate that, because not only wavesailing sucks (way too choppy), but also you can't even surf at sunrise when it's like that!
Mmm... maybe I'll go to Hana and surf the windswell at Koki beach... it's going to be pretty damn big.
Lastly, let's not forget that, as Pat Caldwell says, "long range estimates are subject to bodacious rebundling". Gotta love it... nice one Pat!

PS. The first sign of the new NW swell at the NW buoy were recorded at 1am of Tuesday. That means that in Maui it won't show up until very late in the afternoon... let's say at sunset time.