Monday 5 29 17 morning call

South shore topping the heights yesterday, but surprisingly good waves also on the north shore. Let me start my story of the day in chronological order with a Gopro shot showing the beauty of the early morning conditions.


The morning light was so gorgeous, I made sure to come out of the water early enough to have at least half an hour of time before going to work. Of course I also wanted to take some photos for the blog, but what I really wanted to do was just sit shirtless in the sun, get the vitamin D production going and suck the beauty of everything in. Haleakala was majestic as usual.


There were some small runners going all the way.


Surprisingly good waves on the north shore I was saying, after work I went for a totally unexpected wave sailing session at Hookipa that had shoulder to head high 11 seconds waves.


"11 seconds?!?! It was only 8 and coming down yesterday, what happened?" was the disquieting dilemma that tortured me all afternoon. That's when my archive of wind maps comes handy. Below on the right is the map of May 24. The fetch responsible for this 11s swell is the one further away. I even went on Google Earth to measure the distance: 17,000 miles. 11s travel at 17.16knots, that's 4 days and yesterday was 28th...so that was it! Pat Caldwell had it in his table, Surfline had it in their forecast, I made the beginner mistake to only focus on the south swell and completely overlooked it.

I also failed giving the deserved attention to the Pauwela readings that I reported yesterday morning: one of them was 1.3ft @ 13s from 48° (NE) and that built to 3f 11s during the day.
Sorry about that.


3am significant buoy readings
South shore
W
2.9ft @ 14s from 154° (SSE)

SW
3.5ft @ 13s from 166° (SSE)
4.9ft @ 6s from 111° (ESE)

SE
4.3ft @ 11s from 109° (ESE)

Interesting readings at the outer buoys, another good example of how the direction indications at these buoys should be taken with a grain of salt. A difference of more than 30 degrees compared to yesterday would make no sense, specially considering how remote the source is. The fetch couldn't move that fast even at the Screaming 60's latitude. I'm going to blame that 6s energy reported by the SW buoy (and with unreported minor readings also by the other ones) that probably comes from a patch of strong trades below the equator.

The Surfline forecast calls for 3f 14s slowly coming down in size from 196 instead and that's what I'm going to trust. In other words: still plenty energy on offer also today. Check the webcams and keep an eye on the wind (see discussion below).

North shore
Pauwela
2.8ft @ 11s from 41° (NE)

1.4ft @ 9s from 38° (NE)

1.4ft @ 6s from 43° (NE)

NE swell still there, but it's predicted to decline all day. I don't hear any noise out of my window, but that could be due to the offshore wind that 4am is blowing 5(2-7)mph from the South at Hookipa. Pauwela's graph below is a bit confusing, but I circled the NE swell in red. As you can see, it peaked yesterday and now is coming slowly down.

This is the 5am wind map that shows a light southerly flow, probably associated with that local low highlighted in the cloud maps at the end of the post. That should stay like that for most of the morning and that seems less that ideal wind for the south shore. Really good for Hookipa though.


The 2pm one shows the usual sun induced tradish thermals on the north shore and a more westerly component on the south one.


North Pacific maps show very little wave generation today: a tiny NNW fetch that was much better yesterday. Related swell still predicted by Surfline at almost 4f 11s on Wednesday.


South Pacific maps show very little wave generation too. All the energy is directed towards South America. 13f 15s for next weekend is the prediction for southern Chile, for example.


There's a local disturbance to keep an eye on. Red arrow shows the way the clouds are moving.


Big Blue shows the same.