Friday 3 24 17 morning call

Surfing and windsurfing was my winning combo yesterday, the latter being the more fun, despite riding a thruster with only two fins (I have a bad box situation... pun unfortunately intended).
Here's the lovely Maria Andres showing us the size of the biggest sets. Because of the light wind, conditions were actually much cleaner that what it looks. I gave it a 7.


4am significant buoy readings
South shore
Lanai

2.3ft @ 13s from 266° (W)

0.2ft @ 22s from 210° (SSW)

Buoy still feeling the wrap of the current swell and a lovely 0.2f 22s from SSW that could be indication of something small to play with over the weekend.

 

North shore
NW101

4.5ft @ 11s from 316° (NW)

3.3ft @ 10s from 335° (NNW)

 

Waimea

3.5ft @ 13s from 322° (NW)

1.5ft @ 10s from 317° (NW)

 

Pauwela

3ft @ 6s from 80° (E)

2.4ft @ 13s from 323° (NW)

2.1ft @ 9s from 44° (NE)

 

Current swell still hanging in there (yes, if the fetch lasts 5 day, the swell lasts 5 days (or more) too). Numbers are small, I'm guessing head high in the bigger sets. Should stay pretty steady during the day, maybe going down a bit with the period, judging by the NW101 readings. Stay tuned for the beach report.

As we know, there's a large swell about to knock on the door and I'm going to take the opportunity to explain once again, despite the fact that I already talked about it in this post, how I use the Surfline forecast. The two links for north and south are n.15 and 14 in GP's list in the right column of this blog. Below is the north forecast (I can only show you the first three days, the rest of it requires subscription) and you get that with clicking on link n.15 and scrolling down a bit.

 

My opinion about that is: useless. The page is called "Maui North Regional Forecast" and assuming those are wave faces heights and focusing on the last one for Sunday, I'd like to know where exactly it is going to be 12 to 14 feet. Is that Hookipa, Paia bay, Kanaha or Jaws? Those four spots, just mention some, are going to be extremely different in size in fact. If you hover with the mouse over that red circle it actually gives you the forecast of the open ocean swells and, as we are also about to learn with the next picture, the big swell is forecasted as 11f 16s from 309 at that time. Whatever formula they use to put 12 to 14 faces is totally wrong. There is no such a formula that is right. It depends enormously on the particular spot.

 

 

But it only takes one more click on the offshore swells tab (indicated by a red arrow in picure above) to get all the information you need. The picture below is what shows all the open ocean swells and if you hover with the mouse over that late Sunday time, you get what I wrote in red. Warning: this graph does not show with my IE, I need Firefox for it. And it might not be smart phone friendly, but I've seen the Surfline app and that is totally useless too.

Now, if every day you check the buoys to see what's in the water (that's the link n.11) and then compare it to what you see at your spot of preference, in a matter of a couple of weeks, you'll start having a pretty good idea of what any combo of size, period and direction does to it. The more you do it, the more your knowledge of that spot increases and you won't need no more useless forecasts that try to predict the size of the waves at any spot.

 

 

MC2km map at noon shows a hell lot of wind. Fortunately, the Hookipa sensor only reads 4(3-6) mph from 93 at 6am, so dawn patrol should be ok.

 

Looks like some clouds, but I'm not a cloud reader.

Current wind map shows:
1) the strong NW fetch still accumulating water molecule after molecule on top of each other.
2) the head of a fetch down under.


I wanted to investigate better on the down under fetch and I scrolled the map to show it better and a monster long one showed up. This morning I have no time to try to figure out if that fetch is oriented towards us or not. Don't forget that maps try to represent in two dimensions something that instead has three, and down by the poles the Earth curvature will introduce an even bigger mistake when represented flat. But the Surfline forecast shows 3f 15s next Friday/Saturday, so we are gonna get something.

3 6 16 morning call

Double surf session, a glorious Napoli game and a deightful work shift made for a pretty good day yesterday.

Hookipa was challenging in the morning with no wind, I imagine it was even more challenging later with the wind that picked up enough for windsurfing to happen. Amazing what the Haleakala does to the wind in Maui when the sun shines.
The photo is by Jimmie Hepp and I wonder if that was a wave from the old swell or the new one, it's hard to tell for me from one shot only. At dawn it was only the old one.


The three buoys graph below shows number that differ significantly between each others. The swell has gone up steadily at the NW buoy with a slight oscillation in the direction (blue line of the lower graph), Waimea has followed pretty closely since it doesn't get blocked much from that direction, Pauwela instead is "suffering" because of the refraction.
At 4am in fact, it only reads:
3.9ft @ 17s from 320° (NW)

3.4ft @ 11s from 337° (NNW)

2.1ft @ 8s from 1° (N)

1.4ft @ 9s from 343° (NNW)
but that is expected to increase throughout all day. Old NNW swell not dead yet, it should actually be more consistent (but much smaller) than the new one. It should be fairly easy to distinguish between the two if you just try to count the seconds between waves of a set.

Shadowing or not, the Pauwela buoy readings are pretty much in line with the Surfline forecast which gives the peak of this swell for this afternoon. I feel like spending a couple of words on the way to read the forecast on that website. First of all, let me tell you straight that I strongly recommend a subscription to it. Its long term forecast gives you decently reliable outlook of swells for the coming two weeks.

Even though you could try to do your own swell forecast by looking at Windity, it's always nice to know what the "official" models think about it. I use it heavily in Indo when planning internal trips.

But PLEASE use the offshore swells tab below if you want to do the right thing. Its graph looks exactly the way the swell will eventually look when it hits the buoy and it shows you beautifully the fact that there's multiple swells in the water at each single time. You can hover with the mouse on the arrows of the different swells and it tells you size and direction. For example, the 2pm forecast for today's swell, is 8.2f 15s from 316 and that is AFTER the refraction. It's what they think Maui's north shore will get. Tomorrow we'll look at the Pauwela buoy's graph and we'll know how close they were.


Most people I know instead uses the Regional Forecast Dashboard which, IMO, is absolutely useless.
According to it, in fact, the peak of this swell will bring 11 to 16 feet faces to Maui's north shore... nice! But where?? We all know very well that the size of the face of the breaking waves will be extremely different at Jaws, Hookipa or Kanaha in the same swell (thank god for that!), so that information has no value. But it does make for glamorous shares on social media when there's a giant swell and the forecast is up to 71 feet faces, I admit. I also admit I feel a sense of disgust when I see those graphs shared.
Stick to the open ocean swell and in two weeks you'll learn what that size and period from that direction does to your own spot.


Wind map shows a NW fetch on the right flank of the high pressure that will take control of the north pacific soon. We are going to be immersed in that exact fetch starting Wednesday and that will bring havoc in the otherwise beautiful conditions we're gonna have till then. Enjoy till it lasts.


Bit of a fetch down south, it seems to me they always happen in the weekend.


MC2km map at 7am below shows beautiful light offshore conditions.


The noon map shows the most of the wind of the day.