Kona

What a beautiful Maui winter day it was!

The wind was blowing Kona (sometimes strong, sometimes light), the sky was cloudy and grey (but not gloomy, rather electric I'd say), the waves weren't too big but they were very clean and Hookipa offered a beautiful spectacle: windsurfing on the left at the Lane, surfing on the right.

My timing was quite bad: I got in the water around noon windsurfing and, after having been nuking for a while before that, the wind quickly became too light.
I stayed an hour and a half or so catching a total of two waves and then decided to go back in.
When I looked at the waves from the parking, they were almost glassy. I went surfing right away!

Just the time to paddle out to Middles, and it was blowing pretty hard again. So hard that I didn't manage to catch one single wave in an hour.

Upwind Pascal and Nick were killing it and I paddled back in with the intention to go back out sailing. Upon touching the shore I figured that I was pretty tired and in need of food and I decided to take a lunch break.
That usually coincides with a photoshoot, so here are the photos in chronological order.

Uncle Robby loves Kona Lanes.


The light was pretty low and since I shoot handheld I got a lot of blurred ones, like this one. The action is too good to leave it out, though...


Pascal loves Kona Lanes too.
In the meantime, at the point this guy gets barreled...

celebrates with a mean turn...

and gets barreled again!

Nice camera!

Pascal bottom turns.

Robby top turns.

Nice peak.

Robby.

Robby.

And Robby.

Pascal.

Pascal.

Bernd.

Pascal's squat. You guys try do that.

Beautiful centered and low stance by Michi.

The king's walk.

Nice wall.

After sailing, Nick went surfing.

And got barreled.

Bit blurred, but Griffin is going to like this one. Those waves were sweet.

No comment.

Nick.

Well, after having seen so many nice rides I could be tempted to think that having ridden only two waves is quite a disappointing outcome of a whole day spent at the beach.

Instead, I like to think that I spent a whole day at the beach (in the middle of January!) and I even caught two waves! Stoked!

Life is what you make of it.

PS. 7pm reading of the NW buoy:
12.5ft @ 11s from NW (318°)
9.5ft @ 10s from NW (313°)
Not the best direction for Maui's north shore and it's never a good thing when two swells are overlapping, but hey... that means more waves!

PPS. The weather maps for the next 7 days look extreeemely wintery (forget about the trades for a while you guys)... love it, love it, love it.
I just love winter in Maui.