1 24 16 morning call

After 2 months and 18 days, the most remarkable event yesterday (for me, of course) was to be able to paddle out on a shortboard. Still using the rib-bra (I'll post a shot) but I was out there again. Very happy and a bit frustrated because of the poor paddling shape, but that will come back.

Here's a few photos I took at sunset at Hookipa.









The WNW swell is showing at the buoys, but as you can see from the readings, it's not that big yet.
I put an arrow on the directions to point out how different they are: 287 at the NW, 312 at Waimea and 325 at Pauwela. Once again, that is because the last two are after the swell was already refracted by the upstream islands.

Yes, a swell originally from 287 (provided that when it hit Kauai it was 287, which of course we don't know for sure) can be registered at Pauwela as from 325. On the north shore of Maui, in the water there can be sets that are more westerly than others, but never from something like 287. Unless all the whales decide to meet outside the Kahului harbor and jump all together to make those waves.
But after yesterday's discussion on the shadow lines, now you know you can seek those westerly swells on the other side too. Over there, they will have been refracted over the southern tips of Ni'ihue and Lanai and will be more west than 287.

Same swell that wraps around opposite sides of an island chain. It's a very intuitive concept (at least I consider it such), but I see that some surfers are completely unaware of these kind of things. Hence I divulge.
Keep in mind that the refraction process reduces the energy (less size) and the consistency.

So with a reading of 5f 16s from 287 at 3am at the NW buoy, I would not expect all that much on the Maui's north shore today, at least compared to the large swells we've got used to lately.
The Pauwela buoys only shows 2f 15s from 325 in fact, but fortunately also still 4f 10s from 346. The photos above were taken with 5f 10s in the water, so even though that NNW component is going down, it will still provide a fun small background size (probably around chest high) no matter what. And on top of that, once in a while, we'll get some longer period sets that could be head high in the morning and get progressively bigger during the day. Between the two swells there will be 5s of difference in the period and 20 degrees of difference in the direction. It should be pretty evident which swell a set belongs to.

Much bigger waves tomorrow, as the peak of this swell in Maui is forecasted by Surfline (that means by the WW3 model) Monday at 8pm at 15f 15s from 320. That is after the refraction.

Is Kihei going to have waves? It's possible, but I'll leave you to the webcams for that.


Wind map shows an extremely solid fetch in a very close position. That's when the waves really get big for us, because the most important factor in size decay is the travelling.
Extra large swell again on Wednesday night and all day Thursday. Get your Jaws boards ready. We might have to put a couple in the rental fleet at Hi-Tech too! Seriously, yesterday a coworker got a call from a lady that wanted to come from Florida, rent one and go surf Jaws...
Another system trails behind just coming off south of Japan and that will provide another swell that will start from a westerly direction. And Kelly is gonna score.


MC2km map at noon shows no wind at all.