Thursday 1 26 17 morning call

Yesterday I was a busy boy and pulled off a bit of a miracle by doing the following:
- lesson from 6.30 to 8.30
- session at Honolua Bay from 9.45 to 10.45
- lesson from 11.30 to 1
- work at Hi-Tech from 2 to 6

Here's the photos I took in only 20 minutes at the Bay. The beauty left me speechless, so I'm gonna shut up also now.

Ridge Lenny on his last day before going back to college in San Diego was out there together with a bunch of other standouts (I liked many of Ian Gentil's waves, for example). This is a wave he caught. I wonder if that makes him feel happier to go back to school or the other way around...

His more famous brother Kai has done extremely well so far in the WQS contest at Sunset Beach. Too big yesterday, probably also today, but check out the contest page for updates. There's a live button, but I'm not sure there's a live webcast unfortunately.
Next time I see him, I'll ask him if he's interested in getting on the WCT tour. Probably not, is my guess, but I hope I'm wrong. Wouldn't mind seeing him there.
In the meantime, many big wave surfers are getting ready for a big session at Mavericks today.


Swell was pumping and getting bigger when I left. Out the back a solid double over header is feeling the bottom contour and starting to bowl up at the Cave. Got really crowded in the afternoon.


3am significant buoy readings
South shore
Lanai
4.1ft @ 15s from 281° (WNW)

That's the wrap, check the Lahaina webcam, yesterday it was knee to thigh, occasional waist high..

North shore
NW101

7.7ft @ 14s from 313° (NW)

 

Waimea
12.8ft @ 17s from 327° (NW)

Pauwela
10.6ft @ 17s from 332° (NNW)

This swell has thrown all the forecasts off. Remember that yesterday I pointed out that the NOAA WW3 table was showing a peak of 7.5f 16s around 2pm? Well the swell went up to a macking 13f 17s instead.
Today's table is pretty unclear too: there's a brand new swell of 4f 20+s that suddenly disappears at 5am. The swell is not at the buoys and not in any other forecast. I'm totally new to these maps and maybe I'm not reading them correctly, but they seem pretty straightforward to me. Maybe I should just ignore them, they're not particularly user friendly either.

But where to go instead? This is the updated Surfline forecast that is calling for 7.7f 14s for today while at the buoy there's much more than that.
Models are more reliable than the buoys, I wrote yesterday. I take it back immediately

The good old buoys show a difference in time between the peaks at the NW101 and Pauwela of only 12h. Period is 15s, GP's rule of thumb is a whopping 5 hours off. This swell got me groping in the dark so badly that I didn't even feel to draw the continuation of the Pauwela line for the day. NW101 shows that it should go down all day, but when you start from 13f 17s, going down can be a very relative thing. Still big waves all day is the message, sunset smaller than sunrise. Geez, this whole call could have been just this simple sentence, couldn't have it?


Current wind map shows:
1) very solid NW fetch. No lack of big waves these days.
2) narrow and long windswell fetch



The time stamp I selected for this mc2km map is 1pm of today the 26th. But the time stamp at the top is from yesterday, so it might be not the freshest update and I recommend to check them again later (link n.17). If it's true, that's totally sailable. Be safe out there.