winter is back to winter

Let's face it: November that was a bit disappointing. Lots of small days and windy as hell. That made it epic for all those european windsurfers in vacation, since they could sail pretty much every day, but way below the average for the a spoiled Maui light wind windsurfer/surfer as myself.

December instead started with beautiful wintery conditions. Thursday the 1st was pretty damn big already (double surf session), but my favorite day was Friday.

I was off and here's how I carefully timed it.
8-9.30 watched the Sunset contest online (and waited for the crowd to leave and for the tide to go down at Kanaha)
9.30 - 12.30 surfed Kanaha. Bit windy, but very small crowd and lots of fun
12.30 - 3 watched the amazing action of the Sunset contest on my phone in the parking at Kanaha
3 - 3.30 rigged my sail (the wind was picking up) taking advantage of the break before the final
3.30 - 4 watched the final on my phone
4 - 6 sailed Kanaha. Big waves, big fun.
In other words, I pulled in the Kanaha parking lot at 8am and left at 6.30pm. Very, very good day.

After that, pretty much every day has been surfable in the morning and sailable in the afternoon and there is nothing wrong at all with that!

Here's a few shots from yesterday.
Francky's comment on his gallery was "Giampaolo trying to kill me!". I do remember I got pretty close to him...



One more shot from Francky. I just love the way the wave looks behind me. Freaking love those water shots, Francky!


This is another turn taken from this gallery of Jimmie Hepp.


One more shot from Jimmie.


Not sure about the board position (that's definitely a turn off the back foot... well, nothing wrong with it!), but I do like the radius and spray of the bottom turn I needed to connect those two different sections of that wave.



This photo was taken the day before instead. The new Hot Sails Maui Firelight is such an amazing sail that all the hot riders now want it. It is posing a serious threat to the rest of the line, but I don't think Hot Sails Maui should worry too much, since it's posing a serious threat to the rest of sails of all the other brands too!
Let me remind you that a 4.7 weights 2.7 Kilos and that's the lightest sail on Earth. You can click on the HSM banner to find out more info.


This one is taken from a gallery of photos on Surfline that documents the action in Hawaii during this first December swell.
Francisco Porcella and Matt Meola share a a bomb at Jaws left.



Tomorrow there will be another fun size NW swell (just hitting the NW buoy as I type: 2.2 feet, 17 seconds from 333 at 4pm), while Thurday a serious one will hit.
This is this morning's weather map and shows the deep storm that is generating it.



This is the Surfline forecast. 12 feet, 16 seconds... not too shabby!



As you can see, it should be from a fairly westerly direction (310-313) and hopefully that will make Kanaha manageable (swells from west of 320 get blocked by Molokai and the West Maui Moutain).
Trade winds will be easterly, let's hope that the morning will be surfable.
Fingers crossed!

And last, but definitely not least, here's the couple of lovely legs I ended up sitting next to at the Hi-Tech Christmas party... what a chance, uh?
The young lady they belong to is just as lovely. Ah, to be 24 years younger...