Thursday, February 25, 2016

2 25 16 morning call

I feel like apologizing for not having pointed out the beautiful light offshore conditions that yesterday morning provided.

I'm gonna blame the unavailability of the MC2km maps which is something that I personally miss enormously. I only posted the 11am Windity snapshot, which was showing light NW winds, which then became stronger later in the day.

Once I figured what the wind was going to do, I timed a Lanes session to perfection: when the buoys just come down to around 6f 13s and just before the wind went from SW to NW. The waves were beautiful and Robby Naish caught some gems on his SUP.
I got a shot of my friend Doron in his Mexican wrestler mask that keeps him 100% out of the sun.



I then squeezed a short photoshoot. I had noticed Kai Barger doing flips without grabbing rails and this is the special pad he had under his front foot. No idea how it works, but it does work.


Albee had one too (although smaller), but he didn't trust it enough and was still grabbing rails.




The surfing day ended with a classic power hour at Paia Bay in which both me and a friend of mine caught 12 waves. That was a good one.
Little announcement: Saturday night 7.30pm at the MACC there will be the Hawaii premiere of the movie Don't crack under pressure. Here's the preview. I'm going.



 
 Big numbers at the buoys today, as we all were expecting.
Below are NW and Hanalei. NW peaked at around 22.5f 20s around 8pm, Hanalei still on its way up at 3am.
 


Both Waimea and Pauwela well on their way up. At 3am Pauwela reads
8.4ft @ 20s from 320° (NW)
3.2ft @ 13s from 327° (NW)
3.2ft @ 12s from 335° (NNW)
3.1ft @ 9s from 356° (N)

Keep in mind this important information outlined by Pat Caldwell: "The swell should be centered near 320 degrees and spread from 305-330 degrees."
A swell never is from only one direction. Whatever the buoys show as direction, that is just the main direction, the one associated with the most energy, but there will be sets that are more westerly than that and sets that are more northerly.
He also calls the peak of the swell in Oahu for 8am. Surfline calls the peak in Maui for 2pm.
By looking at the NW buoy and applying GP's rule of thumb, I would guess a 8am peak in Maui, which is much earlier than what both uncle Pat and Surfline call for. We shall wait and see.


Today the Eddie could be run. Check it out here.
I feel like sharing this post I saw yesterday on facebook for two reasons:
1) I like Jamie Mitchell's comment. If someone like him says that, that means something.
2) it highlights again the absurdity of the Hawaiian scale. Not sure how that conversion is done, what puzzles me is why people uses it. 26f 19s should be enough information. It would be nice to eventually add how big the face of the waves will be at Waimea bay, but 29.5 Hawaiian feet does not tell you that.


Careful if you're going down at Jaws, it looks like there was some rain during the night as the 3.15am radar shows.


Weather map shows a nice NW fetch providing the next NW pulse at the beginning of next week.


Bit of energy should come also from the south in a week.

11am Windity closeup shows a direction of 60 degrees which will make sailing the north shore extremely challenging, most likely impossible, considering the size of the waves.
Could be good elsewhere.

 

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