Thursday, December 22, 2016

12 22 16 morning call

Couple of sessions at dawn and sunset for me yesterday, not bad for a windy day.

The windsurfers hit it in the afternoon, here's coworker Russ Faurot in a nice bottom turn.


Multiple times PWA world champion Victor Fernandez. Photos by Jimmie Hepp from this gallery.


Not knowing if Jimmie had been shooting earlier, I took this shot at sunset, because I always like to have a shot of the day, mostly to show the size of the waves. Fortunately Jimmie was there, so we can enjoy some much better quality photos, but I'm gonna use this one anyway to illustrate some of the devastating effects of the strong trades:

- indicated by two red arrows on the wave out the back are two sub-peaks  that would not be there if there wasn't windswell in the water
- indicated by a black circle is a massive side chop that is travelling right to left. That's what makes surfing Hookipa very challenging (and Hookipa a poor surfing spot)
- indicated by a blue line is how irregular the lip line of that wave is. Without wind, it would be a much straighter line.


4-5am significant buoy readings
South shore

Nothing at the buoys, check the webcams.

North shore
NW
7.9ft @ 14s from 317° (NW)

Waimea
4.7ft @ 14s from 325° (NW)           
3.9ft @ 12s from 335° (NNW)

Pauwela
6.5ft @ 14s from 331° (NNW)
5.5ft @ 10s from 77° (ENE)
3.1ft @ 6s from 76° (ENE)
 
Below is the graph of the NW buoy. Pretty steady, we knew this was going to be a long lasting swell because we observed the originating fetch stay in place for a few days. Consequently, those 6.5f 14s at the Pauwela buoy should stay pretty steady too.
 
If are still not sure what size waves a particular size/period/direction combo creates at hookipa, look at the photos of the day, compare it with the buoy readings the day before and voila', you have years of archive of swell and resulting wave size at Hookipa right here on this blog.
 
One of the many aspects I like about this blog (or blogs in general) in fact, is that every single word/photo I put on it, stays. Forever. And with the "archive" feature, you can retrieve any date you want. For example, you want to know what I did on Jan 28 of 2005? Probably not, but I'll tell you anyway because I just randomly found it in the archive: I broke a longboard in two pieces!
12 years younger, less wrinkles on the face, more unnecessary fat tissue on the belley (wasn't eating as healthy as I am now) and overall a lot less knowledge about life. Would not go back in time one minute.
 
Current wind map shows a new and strong NW fetch and a windswell fetch. Resulting swell from the first one predicted by Surfline to rise from 5f 16f (which is big already) at 8am on Sunday to 10f 15s at 8pm.


NAM3km map at noon shows easterly trades.

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