Sunday 2 26 17 morning call

Double session for me yesterday, second one at Honolua and these are a couple of shots that I took waiting for my surf guide customer to arrive. The detailed report is on the beach report that I took mid morning, below this post. The mid morning updates are kinda random, but it can pay off if you check the blog often during the day...




This one from the water shows the fun, playful size of the waves.


Couple of (hundred) words to commentate my choice of going to the Bay. At that time in the morning, the swell was peaking at Pauwela with readings around 5f 15s from around 325. That's the direction after the swell refracted upon the upstream islands of Kauai, Oahu and Molokai. The original direction up at the NW buoys was around 305. As indicated in the NW buoy to Maui travelling time and shadowing angles (check the "labels" section for future references) the Molokai shadow line for Honolua is 335. But the longer the period, the more the waves have the ability of wrapping around land points.

ALSO, here's a sentence from Pat Caldwell's meteo poem composed on Friday, referred to yesterday's swell: PEAKING SATURDAY FROM 300-320 DEGREES. Now, even though the dominant direction was shown by the NW buoys as around 305, knowing that the direction range was up to 320 was a good info to have. The consistency was low, because only the bigger, less westerly sets managed to wrap around Molokai, but some sure did.

So, with those information in mind, I just judged the swell big enough to get in there and we definitely scored much cleaner conditions that what the north shore (that I surfed very early) was offering. Local knowledge paid off, no forecast on the internet will ever tell you exactly the size of the waves at Honolua in a case like this. You got to make your own call and that's what this website tries to help with.


4am significant buoy readings
South shore
Lanai
2.4ft @ 14s from 291° (WNW)
Bit of a wrap, check the webcams.

North shore
NW101
5.8ft @ 14s from 316° (NW)

4.1ft @ 10s from 317° (NW)

Waimea
4.8ft @ 14s from 305° (WNW)

Pauwela
3.7ft @ 8s from 56° (ENE)           

3.5ft @ 14s from 326° (NW)

 

Below is the graph of NW101 and Pauwela and it shows that Pauwela has peaked yesterday late morning (red arrow), but the NW101 is staying pretty steady in size and the swell turned more north in the last 12 hours. The two things should compensate each other and the swell in Maui should be smaller than yesterday (3.5ft @ 14s), but stay pretty steady throughout the day. It should actually be a bit more consistent at sunset (and possibly even a bit bigger), because of the more favorable direction.

NAM3km map at 7am shows ideal wind for surfing.


The 2pm map shows ESE trades that should offer good conditions also in the afternoon. Check the MC2km map later when and if they updated them. Despite the fact that yesterday they predicted a late afternoon glass off that didn't happen, I still consider them the best wind prediction for Maui with a reliability of about 85-90%. Morning maps are more reliable than afternoon maps, because the thermals are hard to predict.


Specially in a day like today, I add. This is a satellite picture at 6am and shows that wide band of high clouds that is moving to the NE and has already cleared Kauai. From the animation (link n.6 of Gp's meteo websites list), it seems that the same will happen to Oahu soon and eventually also Maui. No idea what time, that's something I don't have much interest in.


Current wind map shows:
1) tiny NNW fetch
2) elongated NNE fetch that will generated a swell predicted by Surfline to be 5f 11s from 24 on Monday afternoon.
3) an unusual SE fetch. No idea of what we're gonna get from that one, because of the long travel distance and the possible block of the Big Island


I got another board for sale. As I mentioned in a post more than a month ago, I ordered a slightly bigger version of my favorite board from the Oahu shaper Glenn Pang. The new board is 6.0x19.5x2.5 30.8L. I thought a couple of more liters would help catching waves in the chop infested Hookipa waters. And they sure do, but once on the wave I'd rather have my thinner (2 3/8) old one, because I can put it on the rail easier with my light weight (I'm 142 pounds at the moment). More volume also helps when the waves are small/soft, but I have another favorite board for small waves. Plus I surf every day and my paddling should be able to handle the 28.5L of the old board. Here they are next to each other, no need to specify which one is the old one and which one is the new one.
Both boards absolutely rip, I just don't need (nor have room for) both.
In a month of use, I put a few pressure bumps on the deck and the price is $350 for a board that retails around $670.
Here's the Craigslist post.