Wednesday, February 10, 2016

2 10 16 morning call

Photographer Jimmie Hepp took a trip to the west side yesterday and of course he also took some pics.




Upon leaving work at 2pm, I checked the Pauwela buoy. It said 7.5f 12s from 336. That's how Honolua bay looks like with that: more and longer waves at the point than at the cave, no barrels and really fun.


This is Robby Naish at sunset at Lanes instead. Looks even more fun. I dig Robby's style.




Well it's another extremely rare day of very long period waves and I will have to stay home because of a bad sore throat. That sucks, but at least I have the Eddie to watch... IF they run it!
The numbers of the new swell are running low at the buoys if fact. Not even remotely comparable to the last big one.

Here's the 5am graphs of the NW buoy and Hanalei. NW is already down to 16s in period and the size is 13.6f. Sure, it looks like it's still going up, but last one had readings of 18f 18s, so this one is way smaller.
Hanalei is reading 5f 20s and that's as high as it's gonna get for that period.


Waimea and Pauwela (2.5f 22s at 5am) are just starting to feel the long period energy: no need to go to Jaws early.
Let's not forget the 7.5ft @ 12s from 342° (NNW) still in the water from the previous swell. Fun size both on the north and west shores.
And once again, it should be fairly easy to distinguish between the two swells, since there will be 10s of difference in the period.



Wind map shows a NNW fetch that is the tail of the fetch that generated today's swell and that is now aiming mostly at the Mainland's west coast. As a matter of fact, another big wave contest has been called on on Friday: the Titans of Mavericks. I don't know much of this event other than:
- it's not a WSL big wave tour contest
- you can watch it online only on redbull.tv and you probably have to pay for it.

The new WNW fetch is now fairly large and aiming somewhere SW of us. This one is going to generate a massive swell for the Marshalls. We'll see that better tomorrow.


The day will start with usual light offshores created by the cold air sitting on the land. By noon, the MC2km map shows some 10-15 knots trades nosing around the corner. By that time the waves should be too big to sail with that light wind, with the exception of Jaws actually.
We'll see, don't take this information too strictly, because Maui can always do its magic with the wind.

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