Tuesday, June 06, 2017

Tuesday 6 6 17 morning call

Lovely early morning of longboarding on the south shore for me yesterday, followed by a breakthrough wind foiling session. I can claim I'm foiling now and, as my friend Jeff Henderson wrote when he first learned, "that's the closest feeling to flying I've ever experienced".

Since yesterday, I know a little better how this must feel. At one point I even felt like I needed to flap my wings...
 

I'll be back on the topic, since I plan on wind foiling every day of this relatively light wind week. In the meantime, I'm gonna link the video of the first ever recorded aerial rotation on a foiled SUP by Dave Kalama's son Austin.

No pictures of the day of the Maui waves, here's one posted by the Macaroni's resort on Facebook in their May album. Apparently it was really good. But of course, it only takes one good day to claim that a whole month was good, so it seems that it's always very good there! And it probably is.

3am significant buoy readings
South shore
W
5.5ft @ 8s from 85° (E)
2ft @ 12s from 154° (SSE)

SW
5ft @ 8s from 80° (E)
1.6ft @ 12s from 165° (SSE)
0.7ft @ 15s from 105° (ESE)

SE
4.5ft @ 8s from 100° (E)
2ft @ 10s from 129° (ESE)
1.6ft @ 12s from 166° (SSE)
 
I can't believe there's still some energy coming from the south. I looked at the fetches and couldn't find much after the fetch of last week's swell rebound, so this must be the slowest part (12 seconds) coming from the very back of the fetch. Wherever it comes from, I'll take it and I'll be there at dawn before a SUP lesson that I scheduled at 7.30am. I'll try to post a report before that, but it's probably going to be knee high everywhere, with the exception of the Lahaina harbor for the reason explained below. This is the first time I do a break breakdown like this, I'll put a label to it to facilitate future references.

Yesterday I surfed three different breaks in Lahaina town. The first one was nearly flat, Breakwall was knee high and the harbor was solid waist high. Lahaina harbor is an historical break that, just like Kaiser's, Ala Moana bowls and Kewalo's in Oahu , is the most consistent (and often biggest) south facing break in Maui. What do all those breaks have in common? They are adjacent to a man made boat channel. The photo below shows what happens when a wave (doesn't matter the size) approaches such setup. The part of the wave in front of the deep channel, keeps travelling without slowing down, or at least not slowing down as much as the part of the wave in front of the reef.

If the water molecules didn't have the tendency to want to stick together (something called cohesive strength), the wave would just separate in two parts: one that would travel through the deep water channel undisturbed till it would end up on the rock wall, and the other breaking on the reef. On a day like yesterday, the waves on the reef would be knee high (like at Breakwall). But instead, thanks to the cohesive force, the water molecule wants to stick together and the result is that the wave bends (second and third red lines in the picture) and forms a bowl, which is a very familiar term for most surfers.
 
After bending, the energy coming from the "channel" part of the wave will pretty much add on top of the energy of reef part of the wave and that creates that beautiful A-frame peak that often is double the size (at the take-off) than everywhere else. After that, the behavior of the two peeling waves will depend on the shape of the reef (and the size goes back to the original size of the wave).

In this case, the right is pretty short because it soon ends up in the same deep water channel that made it bigger at the take-off, while the left is much longer and very speedy and that's exclusively due to the nature and shape of the reef.
 
Yesterday I wanted to drop cement triangles on the reef to create artificial peaks. Today I feel like excavating a channel every 50 yards on every reef surrounding Maui. Every channel would be a new wave (possibly two on each side of the channel, depending on the shape of the reef and direction of the swells). Well, now you guys know my agenda in case you vote me as the next Maui Mayor... My only other action would be the introduction of a new law: if you're a Maui resident and you complain about something, you go to jail or get kicked out of the state. No complaining allowed in paradise, otherwise it means you have completely lost your sense of perspective and you don't deserve to live here.


North shore
Pauwela
3.8ft @ 8s from 75° (ENE)

Small windswell reading, Hookipa will be near flat.

8am wind map.


2pm wind map shows wind in the 18-21 mph range on the north shore.


North Pacific map shows a couple of small/weak fetches: a NW one and a N one. Plus a narrow windswell one.


South Pacific map shows a nice SSE fetch with a small area of 30+ knots wind.

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