Sunday 5 27 17 morning call

Outrageously gorgeous days of big waves on the south facing shores yesterday. I went on a photo  safari and visited several spots. The first one was going totally off and this guy was on a tear (next three photos).

Lots of closeouts, but also the occasional barrel.


Granger Larsen grew up surfing this wave. You can tell he's quite comfortable there (next three photos).

 

Spot 2 was Breakwall where the HSA contest was running kids heats. Solid double overhead for them.

Spot 3 was doing the Teahupoo thing, which I failed catching properly on camera.

Spot 4 was were the longboard contest was held. I got to watch two heats with non particularly good surfers and the result was totally boring (no lack of respect for longboarding or nose riding, but I do have a preference for high performance shortboarding). I'm sure the level picked up later on, but I got out of there pretty quickly. These two lost boards floating over the reef symbolizes what I just wrote. The reef walks that followed looked gnarly.

Spot 5 was the one I surfed and unfortunately got dropped in on a beautiful looking wall. He's already apologizing, no worries brah! Let's all make an effort to be respectful of the etiquette and to be tolerant with the undeliberate violations. A positive vibe in the lineup makes the whole experience a lot more enjoyable.



Spot 6.

Spot 7.

 

 

4am significant buoy readings
North shorePauwela

2.2ft @ 8s from 27° (NNE)

1.6ft @ 9s from 32° (NE)

1.3ft @ 13s from 48° (NE)

1.1ft @ 10s from 18° (NNE)

North shore nearly flat but if you have a longboard there will still be something to ride at Hookipa.

 

South shore

W

3.1ft @ 14s from 169° (SSE)

SW
3.2ft @ 14s from 176° (S)

SE
3.8ft @ 14s from 186° (S)

South swell didn't go down that much in size, just a second or two in the period. That does translate in less size on the reef though, so today you can expect slightly smaller waves, but still plenty energy. It should overall be a better day on the Lahaina side, where I found the most spots couldn't quite hold the size yesterday and were closing out in the biggest sets. High crowd advisory still in effect.

Here's an early morning overhead bomb I just caught on the webcam.

 

Another windless day, here's the map at 2pm. The model was totally right about Maalaea yesterday, btw.

 

North Pacific maps show a narrow NW fetch, but fetch nonetheless. Resulting swell forecasted at 4f 11s on Wednesday by Surfline.

 

South Pacific maps only show a weak SSE fetch which I would have totally missed if it wasn't for the Meteogram map.

 

I don't think those clouds will bother us, so hopefully another stunner of a day is on its way.

 

Thanks a lot to blog reader Ben who informed me that the reason why there's so much fuss about the tides is that they have been higher than predicted. I quickly investigated and found out on this website that he was right. Here's a graph showing the predictions (blue) and the actual level of the water (red). That also explains why I didn't notice any particularly low tide when surfing (I remembered much lower tides in the past years). I didn't surf at high tide, but yes, 3-6 inches more than the prediction are a lot.