While the event of the weekend was for sure the very successful Ian Walsh's Menehune contest at Hookipa, around 30 SUP foilers participated to the practice downwind races set up by Alex Aguera through the Instagram account Mauidownwindfoil. This is a group of 5 about to pass the starting line of the second race.
After calling the start, Alex drives his boat down the coast at full speed to get to the harbor mouth in time (barely in time, in the case of Kane!) to record and time the arrivals. Look at those bumps everywhere!
Conditions were excellent. Below is an energy chart from Surfline that shows the biggest energy centered around 8-9s. These move at a speed of around 14 knots and as such are hard to stay on for long time. Fortunately, there was also a decent amount of 6s energy, which helped a lot to keep flying.
After two weeks of rest and Ibuprofen due to back pain, I was able to do the first race. I had a pretty bad run, fell like 6 times and overall felt quite out of tune with the gear. Happy to be back nonetheless, although with a concerning diagnosis of a synovial cyst on a facet joint compressing the nerve at the L5 level.
5am Surfline significant
buoy readings and discussion.
South shore
Barbers
Lanai
Decent amount of 17s energy at the buoys from the swell I discussed yesterday. Buoys don't tell about consistency though, and I'm expecting a pretty low one due to the angular spreading nature of this swell. Check the
Kihei webcam if interested,
for size, conditions and consistency.
North shore
NW001
Hanalei
Waimea
Pauwela
New NW swell is at the NW buoys and will be rising all day locally. Below are the maps of May 1 through 4 that show the fetch that generated it. Home guess for
Hookipa is around chest high of mostly easterly windswell in the morning with the NW groundswell building all day with possible overhead sets at sunset (2.5ft 15s predicted by Surfline at 6pm).
Wind map at noon. The other ones can be found here.
Fetches map
(circles legend: red: direct aim, blue:
angular spreading, black: blocked, yellow: possibly over the ice
sheet) from
Windy.
North Pacific (about 4 days travel time from the NW corner
of the North Pacific):
South Pacific (about 7 days travel time from east/west of
New Zealand):
Morning sky
