5 5 17 morning call

Just a lovely Lahaina surf session for me yesterday. It was mostly waist high, but as clean as it gets at dawn. I love surfing small, clean waves, also because I got a really good board for them.

In the afternoon, the windsurfers hit the waves at Hookipa and this is a photo by Jimmie Hepp from this gallery.


6am significant buoy readings
South shore
The death of the Lanai buoy is confirmed, at the this point the only info we have are:
1) the Surfline forecast (1.5f 11s from 199)
2) the webcams
That's still a lot of info. IF the forecast is true, that's really small stuff and that's what the webcam shows. This south swell was really fun and long lasting, but we can pretty much say that with today it will be gone. Next one should start filling in Tuesday.

North shore
N
5.9ft @ 8s from 41° (NE)

4.3ft @ 11s from 327° (NW)

Waimea
5.5ft @ 8s from 21° (NNE)           

1.8ft @ 10s from 343° (NNW)

1.5ft @ 11s from 340° (NNW)

Pauwela

5.6ft @ 8s from 20° (NNE)                      

1.8ft @ 11s from 341° (NNW)

 

All traces of the NW swell disappeared from the NW buoys, somehow there's 4.3f 11s at the N buoy, together with 5.9f 8s from 41. Locally, the dominant energy is the 8s one from NNE. That's also what the energy spectrum diagram of Pauwela indicates on the top left corner in the picture below, even though the hottest spot on the graph seems to be associated with the remaining NNW. I still have to learn how to read those graphs, I guess. One thing for sure, as reported in the early morning beach report (which today I did before this call, so you'll find it below), the energy in the water at Hookipa seemed almost exclusively the 8s one.

 

For the sake of analysis, let's have a look at the distinct moments of the generation of this northerly swell (there's always something to learn observing the fetches).
Below is the wind map of May 1st. Fetch n.1 is starting to stir up the waters and is creating a medium period swell from the NW. That's what started to fill in Wednesday night.


But if we now skip to May 3rd (you can mentally interpolate the two maps to guess what happened on the 2nd), we can see how the fetch (now n.2!) is now a lot closer to the islands (shorter periods) and making waves more from a NNE direction. Which is what we have on tap today. Notice also how the N buoy might still be in position to get some of the longer period NW energy generated at the very top of the fetch.


Another classic trades day sky. BTW, the light on the Pali yesterday morning was unreal.


Trades will blow.


Current wind map shows:
1) the fetch responsible for Monday's swell is still fairly big, but a little weaker than yesterday
2) windswell fetch
3) elongated, but not particularly intense south fetch.