Wednesday, January 14, 2009

epic surf + new blog sponsor

Classic Hawaii surfing condition Tuesday morning, thanks to the light offshore Kona wind.



Beautiful! And...


...covered. Hey, where's his head?


Oh, there it is.


Clean overhead open faces.


"Hey look, that guy is getting barreled!"




Hands in the water are so important for tight fast turns.
That's why I can't watch SUP surfers who don't use the paddle when they surf. It's like they have the big advantage of a very long hand and they don't use it!


Mini sequence dedicated to a body surfer.


Technically, the purest for of surfing. Or at least the closest to how dolphins surf.


Deep in the pit. That and the consequent wipeout must feel really good. You got no board and, as long as you don't hit the reef, nothing hard will hit/cut you.
One big advantage of body surfers (the guy in these photos told me): once in a while a big macker set catches all surfers by surprise and they all get caught on the inside.
He, instead, can dive under the waves and be the only one who made it through.
For a few minutes he's the king of the spot alone on the outside and can choose whatever wave he wants.
That must feel good too.


He can't throw all that spray though.


Kaleo riding an avalanche. Even though I should re-touch most of these photos with photoshop (but I don't have the time), I really like some clearly overexposed shots like this.


I'd rather be out and take more shots like this than spending time re-touching them with photoshop!


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I'd like to welcome a new blog sponsor. You'll find the text link under the banner section on the right.
Current prices are $40/month for a banner and $15/month for a text link.
Blog readers are continuously growing. Here's a graph of the quarterly traffic. Q4 2008 had 55k unique visitors and 77k page loads.


So if you like this blog and would like to support it, help it grow by emailing its address to your friends and posting it on forums, on your blog, etc.
And don't forget the donations. Feel like a post is worth a buck? I'll take it! The paypal donate icon is on the right.
A hundred little donations of one dollar and I'll get the money of the new lens back. You like those duck dive shots, don't you?

Report
As shown, yesterday morning the surfing was awesome. In the afternoon, I sailed Kanaha with a light Kona. Fun, but the waves were barely head high and inconsistent (the swell was on the way down).
This morning it was again very fun surfing and even smaller (but super clean) waves with light kona wind.
Now, wednesday afternoon, the kona is blowing stronger (gusts up to 24 in Kanaha), but the new swell is not here yet.

Forecast
Here's the surfline NW buoy reading at noon.


12 feet at 18 seconds, but from a little more than 300 degrees.
The waimea buoy just started to sense 2-3 feet, 20 seconds forerunners and consequently the Oahu webcams are starting to show some long period head high sets.
That means that, I don't think we'll get anything big to sail in Kanaha this afternoon. There will be sets in the late afternoon up the coast towards Hookipa, but for the Kanaha wave sailing action, we'll have to wait until tomorrow.
I hope I'm wrong and I'll go check anyway...

And tomorrow classic show at Lanes with strong Kona and huge waves. Get your ass on the hill if you're in Maui.
Get your fingers on the mouse if you're not, since all Maui bloggers will be there filming and taking photos.
Mmm... all of them?!? Not really sure about that... stay tuned!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I take it from the size of your blog that you're over the cold?

Take care!

Annex