Saturday, December 23, 2017

Saturday 12 23 17 morning call

Double windfoiling sessions for me yesterday. First one was in Kihei and the best part were the colors. The sun was out (which felt overly good after so much rain) and the water was blue, but without waves it was like slalom foiling: borderline boring for my spoiled me.

Second one was in Kahana and it was delightful instead. I sailed the Iwa (which performed great) and I had the usual blast following the bumps in the water from the reef to the beach. You can't really call it wave windfoiling, but at the same time you can, since part of the lift cames from the moving water.

There were a few other windfoilers with a "proper" windsurf foil setup and the were just going on a straight line, propelled by a bigger sail (I was on a 4.3 in very marginal sideon wind) and getting the lift pretty much exclusively from the speed that the sail generated. Sure, they were faster than me, but what's the point? I still believe the industry is going the wrong way. Or at least, only one way.

No action shot of the day, but the crossing of the east entrance of Kanaha beach park provided some serious thrill with my low riding car. Better stay on the left next time, a bit shallower.


2am significant buoy readings
South shore

No energy at the buoys, the Surfline forecast calls for 1f 11s.

North shore
NW
3.7ft @ 12s from 345° (NNW)
3.5ft @ 7s from 5° (N)
3.1ft @ 10s from 6° (N)

Waimea
4ft @ 10s from 8° (N)           
2.9ft @ 14s from 327° (NW)

Pauwela
3.6ft @ 11s from 10° (N)          
3.2ft @ 14s from 326° (NW)
 
A new small NW pulse is at the buoys today, but it should be already trending down throughout the day. At the same time, a much bigger swell should start filling in (most noticeably in the afternoon) before peaking tomorrow at 10f 15s from 334 at 2pm, as predicted by Surfline. Winds won't be favorable, but that has been a pretty common scenario this winter so far.

The usual wind model is not updated, here's the noon map of the other one (link n. -2) showing very onshore winds also for today. Black circle well offshore shows the original direction. Can't call that  trades. Kihei downwinders looking good again.


North Pacific shows a million little fetches, none of which deserving particular attention.


South Pacific shows a cute semi-proper southerly fetch instead, but it's not going to last long enough to do much.


Close up satellite photo not available, we'll do a big blue image instead. Hopefully that'll help re-adjusting the perspective. Try to imagine how your head looks like compared to the Earth. And the Earth looks even smaller than that if compared to the rest of the Milky Way. Which, in turn, looks even smaller if compared to the rest of the universe.
And you think you have a problem? Then you probably do. And it's in that little head of yours.

2 comments:

(Ben) Jamin Jones said...

GP this is strange, when I ran http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/MET/Faculty/wrf/arw/arw_maui_loop_10mw.html
at 9am I got a very different result for 12 noon, my picture shows NE wind 15-20, and the wind field increases a bit until 2pm, and then after that time shows a blank page with "grid error". My assumption has been that this model is initialized and updated every morning at 2am, but it could be that only the data is from 2am, and the model itself (the site) is not refreshed until later, possibly after your report.

If you show a screenshot in your report, I can compare to what I see later, for educational purposes. Otherwise no big deal.

BTW are your aware of this iwindsurf real time wind field page?
http://wx.iwindsurf.com/search/20.89/-156.449/12/22
(select ARW 5km hawaiil from the drop down on the left side if not already selected)
pretty handy for comparing current conditions to the model forecast.

cammar said...

Hi Ben,
thanks a lot for your inputs.
The SOEST source of data must be having some issues right now, se we'll do the test you indicate when they fix it.
Didn't know that page, I like it also because there's a bunch of other sensors that don't show in the regular page! Cheers.