Friday 12 28 18 morning call

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Yesterday morning my ribs weren't too painful and the waves were gorgeous, so I couldn't resist the call and had a shortboard and a SUP foiling session. That was a bad idea, as this morning the ribs are significantly worse than they were yesterday. GP, you're injured and you got to stay put, no matter how good the waves are. This over exposed shot of Ian Walsh is all I have to document the surfing conditions at Hookipa yesterday morning.


Actually, what am I talking about, I got plenty gopro material. First wave of the day was good one.

That's a heavy lip trying to take me out.


No wonder I look happy I escaped it. Hawaiian snow.


And here's a ride.


Afterwards I taught a SUP foiling lesson and after that I had a lovely session myself. On this wave I try to talk over for teaching purposes, since you can't see anything of what I'm doing.


This photo by Chris illustrates a cut back from Dave Kalama. As I was saying in the talk over video above, cutbacks while foiling require bending both knees and keeping the board low to the water. The acceleration you get out of a change of direction, in fact, will make the foil want to come out unless you compensate by pushing it down. There's three angles in foiling: pitch, roll and yaw. IMO, the perfect foiling cutback is the one where once you set those angles at the beginning of it, you don't have to adjust throughout it. That results in a beautiful flow and lack of speed dissipation. Dave Kalama is a master at that. 90% of his cutbacks are like that. Every time I foil with him, I get better just by watching him. Unfortunately, as soon as he leaves, I regress to my original skill level...



4am significant buoy readings
South shore
No indication of southerly energy at the buoys

North shore
NW001
11.2ft @ 17s from 329° (NW)

Hanalei
10.7ft @ 17s from 314° (NW)

Waimea
7.6ft @ 17s from 310° (WNW)

Pauwela
4.8ft @ 18s from 317° (NW)

4.8ft @ 9s from 78° (ENE)

2ft @ 12s from 328° (NW)

 

New large long period NW swell on the rise. Below are the graphs of the reported buoys plus the Surfline forecast. They all have a different scale, so I reported the upper end of it in red. Notice how accurate the Surfline forecast is in this case, as it was reporting 5f 18s in the early morning, which is exactly what we have at Pauwela. That also means that the swell is going to keep building all day. The forecast calls for 8.5f 16s at sunset.
Let's also not forget the ENE windswell that will hit the easterly exposures.

 

 

 

Wind map at noon. Notice the onshores on Oahu that should coincide with the arrival of a front.

 

Here's the Big Blue satellite shot that shows the front.

 

Comes with some rain.

 

North Pacific has a wide WNW fetch and a weak NNW and E windswell ones. The section of the first one that is more west than 300 will get mostly blocked by the upstream islands. Nonetheless, Surfline has this swell at 9f 16s on Wednesday and 10f 15s on Thursday.

 

South Pacific has a small/weak S fetch.

 

Morning sky shows the big clouds over to the west.

Sunday 2 25 18 morning call

Just a shortboard session for me yesterday, but a very fun one. No shots of the day, but 17 SUP foiling photos from a recent session with some technical comments on it. If you're here just for the call, scroll down a lot.

Way too much work to arrange the photos in a meaningful order, I'll stick with the chronological one.

 

 

Jason Hall is a much better surfer and foiler than me. He doesn't use straps and has a great style. Straps have advantages (see later), but they do constrict you in a fixed feet position. Lovely upper body twist here for an aggressive cutback.

All style on this one instead. He's goofy like me and he seems to like the paddle on the back side. Trying to caress or touch the water on the inside of a cut back is always a good idea. Ask Tom Curren.


In this front side cut back, without switching hands on the paddle, he moved it to the inside of the turn again to achieve the same shoulder twist.


I like to have the paddle on my front side instead. That's the side I use 99% of the times I paddle for a wave, often switching to it only for the very last stroke if the desired angle of the board requires me to do so. I'm just stronger and more balanced on that side. It doesn't help the shoulders twist in the backside cutbacks though, if I keep it there.


This mini sequence illustrates one of the advantages of the footstraps, particularly the back one in this case. Pumping a foil board is very similar to jumping up and down, with a slight delay between the timing of the two feet.
Something like: front up - back up / front down- back down. Here I'm pulling the back foot up against the strap and that helps greatly to lift the whole tail of the board.

Here I'm about to start loading up the front foot.
Other advantages of the front foot strap are:
1) a nice sensation of a solid connection to the board
2) it can be used to leverage against it also in the cutbacks

If you ask around instead (as I did, before deciding nonetheless to add some stick on inserts to give it a try), most people will tell you "so I'm sure the foot is in the right position". That doesn't make any sense to me, as there is no right position. The biggest advantage of not having a strap is that you can move your foot according to what the ride and the wave demands.

I installed it like two weeks ago and I'm gonna use it till the end of February and then try again with no back foot strap. I have a feeling I'll miss it and put it right back on, but I'll let you guys know. Too bad that won't mean anything, as it's a very personal choice.

Jason's first attempt to the air chair. Flash and Austin are the best ones I've seen at this peculiar way of foiling. I've never tried and I'm honestly scared about it.

This one illustrates the leash system. My board is 6.6 and I'm 5.9 and I can get away with an 8 feet leash. 9 or 10 would work better for bigger boards/riders. Not ideal for novices, as you wipeout more often, but still better, IMO, than those coil leashes. The estimated amount of time I take to tack it back in the shorts after I wipe out and I get back on the boards on my knees, is less than a second. I do it even in front of approaching white water in the middle of a set.

Looking cool wasn't my first priority on this relatively big drop. Keeping the nose down was. And that was a good idea, as I managed to control it and enjoy a very long glide. Underfoiling better than overfoiling.

 

Same wave. I just like the water in this one.

A different perspective. Thanks to my visiting friend Gianfranco for all the great shots.

I remember this one, as I thought I was going down for sure. Instead a miracle happened and I managed not to overflow and to somehow continue the ride. I think the paddle touching the water helped (I'm not leaning on it though, my weight is still centered in the middle). If anything, at least it made me crouch down and keep a low stance.

Didn't do as good here. The moment the foil breaks the surface of the water, it looses all its lift and the nose of the board crashes back to the water surface.


I'm pretty sure I'll end buckling my board at one point (it wasn't build for that), but at least the Gofoil (current) mast is only two feet long, so you don't crash as hard as if it was longer. The other advantage is that you only need two feet of depth. The main advantage of a longer mast would be more play before overfoiling. On the other hand, when you do overfoil, you crash from a higher height and you will touch the bottom more often in shallow waters.

It's always a treat to end a session with a very long one, aiming for the dock.

I'll end with a quote from the best book I've ever read: "The untethered soul" by Michael Singer. I've read it 4-5 times and I keep learning something every time.
Consciousness has the ability to do what is called "focus". It is part of the nature of consciousness. The essence of consciousness is awareness and awareness has the ability to become more aware of one thing and less aware of something else. In other words, it has the ability to focus itself on certain objects.

Right now, all I'm aware of is the water in front of me. The incessant chatter of the voice of the mind inside all humans' head is temporarily silent and that is what for me is bliss. That happens in any form of wave riding, but somehow it's enhanced by the lack of water noise while foiling.



4am significant buoy readings
South shore
No indication of southerly energy at the buoys, the Surfline forecast calls for 0.8f 15f. There were waves in the waist to occasionally shoulder high on the Lahaina side already yesterday.

North shore
Pauwela
9.1ft @ 10s from 87° (E)

East swell still pumping, but with a slight turn more to the east.

Wind map at noon.

North Pacific shows a couple of small NW fetches and the usual E one.


South Pacific shows a nice fetch partially blocked by New Zealand. Next weekend's south swell swell could be bigger than the actual one.

 

 

Morning sky. 

 

Wednesday 2 14 18 morning call

Longboard and SUP foiling sessions for me yesterday. This is the picture I had in mind when I entered the water for the first one. Got lucky to be able to actually take it.


Below is a video with Alex Aguera explaining how to put on and take off the Gofoil wings. My wing was so tight because I previously used surf wax which, as Alex explains at the end, might help getting it in, but then it gets sticky (that's what it's made for!) and makes it difficult to take it off. Silicone lube did the trick and now I can replace the wings without having to take the whole foil out of the board. Stoked to have "the boss" so available for these kind of help.


If Alex is the guy I have thank for making these incredibly fun toys, Dave Kalama is the one I have to thank for actually convincing me to buy my first foil without having ever tried it. It wasn't words, it was the stoked eyes of the kid he had after a foiling session at the harbor.
"If a guy like him is having so much fun with this thing, I'm going to give it a try" is what I thought. I'm glad I did.
Photo by Tomoko from yesterday's session.


4am significant buoy readings
South shore
No indication of southerly energy at the buoys, the Surfline forecast calls for nothing.

North shore
NW101

8.4ft @ 12s from 318° (NW)

5ft @ 10s from 316° (NW)

Waimea
7.5ft @ 13s from 322° (NW)

Pauwela

5.8ft @ 14s from 328° (NW)

3ft @ 8s from 67° (ENE)

2.9ft @ 10s from 329° (NW)

Second pulse of the current NW swell on the rise at the buoys. Below is the graph of the three reported ones together with the Surfline forecast. If this last one is correct, the swell should peak at 7.6f 12s at 2pm locally and I drew the red line accordingly.
What we know for sure, is that 6f 14s at 4am is bigger than yesterday morning.



Wind map at noon.


North Pacific shows a WNW fetch and a small easterly windswell one.


Nothing on offer in the South Pacific.


Morning sky and somehow Oahu has rain again and we don't. Not yet at least, Windguru calls for some in the afternoon.

Tuesday 2 12 18 morning call

A SUP foiling and a longboard session for me yesterday, both very fun. Here's a long wave of the SUP foiling session in which I could not contain my stoke, as you will hear. So much fun!


Here are some photos from Tomoko.




And these are mine, before the sky cleared up.






After that, I had a blast nose riding my 9.4 single fin Tudor. Those elusive last few inches...


5am significant buoy readings
South shore
No indication of southerly energy at the buoys, the Surfline forecast calls for nothing.

North shore
NW101
6.7ft @ 14s from 308° (WNW)

Waimea

3.5ft @ 15s from 316° (NW)

3.4ft @ 11s from 318° (NW)

2.9ft @ 8s from 10° (N)

Pauwela
4ft @ 8s from 42° (NE)

3.6ft @ 15s from 324° (NW)

2.9ft @ 11s from 335° (NNW)

New NW swell is on the rise. Below is the graph of the three reported buoys, together with the Surfline forecast for the next three days, which should see similar sizes (red line). The scale of the Surfline's graph is very high, because around Feb 22-23, the models predict strong trades and a 12f 9s easterly windswell. The wind conditions in the early morning will be ideal light offshore. Chilly, but clean. Expect a possible excellent score in my Hookipa beach report before 7am.


This is the wind map at 9am. As you can see, that's when a easterly trades flow should reach Hookipa.

Wind map at noon shows some easterly trades, possibly sailable. Don't miss out the windsurfing if it happens, as it might be a while before it happens again.


The wind will be delightfully light for the next 10 days. After that, Surfline predicts the return of the trades and a high windswell.


North Pacific shows a WNW fetch.


Nothing of relevance in the South Pacific.


Morning sky.