Kauli Seadi interview + a bunch of photos

Three times PWA wave world champion Kauli Seadi has joined Hot Sails Maui.

Here's a little interview.



Kauli is an amazing sailor (three times PWA wave world champion) with an incredibly fluid surfing style. I once wrote that he was born "in the pocket".
He's also a very motivated professional. Many years ago I wanted to interview him for Windnews. I called him in the morning of a very rainy and onshore wind day, thinking it would be a good time for it. He answered:"no let's do it another day, I heard there's wind in Kihei... I'm gonna go practice some freestyle".
"Sure no problem, I'll call you tomorrow".
I hung up, looked outside the window in the pouring rain and thought to myself:"are you kidding me?!?"
We eventually made the interview at Hookipa, between sessions.

He's also a very committed tester. I can't remember one single session in which he's not switching boards, fins, sails. He's animated by a strong will for improving his gear and he tries to achieve that restlessly.

That's why I think he's an fantastic "acquisition" for Hot Sails Maui. Jeff Henderson is a good friend of mine and I'm really stoked for him.

Kauli and blog author smile below.

And now a bunch of photos that were waiting on my memory card.
I swear I just wanted to take a photo of Levi, but this lady got in the way.

On January 11 I lucked out into some epic conditions at Hanamanu. It's not a secret spot (that's why I'm posting photos of it), but good luck at getting it as good as I got it that day!
This is Ian Gentil, who is up next in the Volcom Pipe Pro that I'm watching in the other window...

The left at the outside of the bay was going off. I wish I had a SUP board to just paddle there and check out how big those waves were.

Kaleo was surfing the right on his standup.

You can't do that to me and not expect me to sneak a shot without been seen...

Nice nose ride with a beautiful background.

Here's a wide angle view of the bay. The left is on the left and the right is on the right.

The drive is not a bad one.

Jan 13 saw many beautiful ladies sun bathing at Hookipa.

And some serious surfing action!

Now a few GoPro shots. This is Dave Kalama, who that day greeted me in Italian:"buon giorno, come stai?"
What a nice guy and a great surfer!

I'm going to use this sequence to illustrate a very common mistake I see beginner and intermediate surfers doing: looking down on the board in the take off.
BTW, this precise moment is one of my favorites of a whole wave ride. You know you caught the wave and I just love how that push up feels.



Here is where it's the most difficult not to look down, but no matter how stiff you are (and I'm not famous to be extremely flexible), you got to keep that head up and look forward.

 

The steeper the drop, the lower you need to be.


Because, if it turns into a bit of a air drop, you can extend your legs to try to keep contact with your board. Which is exactly what happened here.



Last photo of the sequence. I stuck the drop and I'm now looking down the line and feeling out what line to make.
Remember, the body goes where the head goes. You're looking down, you're going down.

 

Couple of more shots to illustrate what kind of awesome session it was.
I actually had a similar one at Middles two days ago, so I feel like spending a few words about the winter we're having.
Even though I cherish the glassy days more than everything else, this year (so far) we're a perfect  alternation between spells (5 to 10 days) of great surfing and of great windsurfing.

In other words, it's been absolutely epic in my opinion.

Last, and definitely least in this case, here's a little gopro clip that I shot at resolution 1440.
I struggled to play it back on my computer and the quality on youtube is not that good at all.
In other words a lot of pixels are not always a good thing.
The photos above, for example, are taken at 7Mp, which is the lowest res of the GoPro 3 (the other one is 11Mp). They are about 4MB in size and it took forever to upload them here.
It seems to me that camera's technology (more precisely sensors' technology) has advanced more than networks and computers.

I wish they would stop adding pixels (who print photos anymore anyway?!?) and focus more energy towards more useful features. Like the possibility of uploading the photos to the internet directly from regular cameras (not cell phones cameras). Or at least, the possibility of tethering them to a cell phone in order to achieve that.
Anyway, enough Steve Jobs kinda talk, here's the clip.



It's the start of a spell of great windsurfing (at least I hope so), so I'm going to post a couple of photo that Jimmie Hepp took of me lately (look him up on facebook.. he's always shooting at Hookipa).
Here's my magic 4.3 which I now use 95% of times, from super light wind pure slog and surf to up to 25 knots. More than that, I rig my 3.7 Superfreak (also because winds over 25 knots in Maui are always super gusty). Only if the wind is light and has an onshore component, I then rig a bigger sail (4.7).
That's how efficient light sails are. You can get away with way smaller sizes.

Well, let's hope to get this stoked again soon!