Here's how the course race was: The start was by an upwind close to shore red buoy (which I skillfully managed to miss in the photo, but I drew one instead and I put an "S" on it).
Then they had to round a downwind yellow buoy still on the inside. Next they had to round an outside buoy placed at Green Trees. To get there, some competitors chose to go take the chance, face the waves (the NNW swell was super consistent with frequent overhead waves), while some others chose to go to the channel doing a much longer but safer course. There was no way to predict the arrival of a set from the inside, so the choice was based on pure strategy and the outcome of it was sheer luck. And some skill to go over the waves, of course.
Here's a Maui girl (I think her name is Annie or something like that) that is about to face an impossible cross. All the leashes have been stretched, some broke.
Once they somehow made it to the outside, the competitors had to paddle in back to the inside yellow buoy, round it and paddle out to round the outside buoy again. Obviously, catching a wave was a fast way to make the trip from the outside to the inside, but riding waves on those super straight rocker race boards didn't look easy at all.
Below we have the three Maui boys (from the left: Connor Baxter, Zane Schweitzer and Kai Lenny) catching a wave together, while Casper Steinfath on the yellow jersey paddles out.
In this case, it didn't end up well for Connor and Zane. Connor got actually sandwiched between the boards, I hope he's ok. Kai looked at the whole scene and obviously got a big advantage in that occasion.
The final was won by Casper, Zane got second and Kai third, if I remember right.
Significant buoy readings 4am
Lanai
1.2ft @ 14s from 257° (WSW)
Very small westerly energy at the Lanai buoy, Lahaina side is going to be small again. Check the webcam for more details.
NW
4.1ft @ 10s from 334° (NNW)
N
5.8ft @ 9s from 13° (NNE)
Waimea
3.1ft @ 9s from 347° (NNW)
3ft @ 6s from 32° (NE)
2.4ft @ 11s from 340° (NNW)
1.5ft @ 14s from 319° (NW)
Pauwela
3.8ft @ 9s from 32° (NE)
3.1ft @ 5s from 63° (ENE)
2ft @ 11s from 347° (NNW)
1.8ft @ 14s from 318° (NW)
Mixed periods and sizes and directions at the buoys, smaller than yesterday but probably still head high at Hookipa. Stay tuned for the beach report for the size.
Current wind map shows a decent, small NW fetch and two not particularly well oriented fetches down south.
Just out of curiosity, here's the latest Windguru table that has changed one more time and now it proposes again the strong trades during next weekend and another strong pulse of trades towards mid week.
FYI: Windguru doesn't do any forecast at all, just like all the other "forecast" websites. They only show in a more or less graphically pleasing way the outputs of extremely complicated mathematical models that try to predict what the atmosphere is going to do. That's no easy task, so don't blame Windguru or Surfline for getting it wrong (don't credit them either for getting it right!).
An example of a website that does a true analysis of what's going on is the Pat Caldwell's one, but he also does rely heavily on the WW3 wave model.
MC2km maps not updated yet at the time of this call, but it should be a regular trades kinda day.
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