Overhead waves graced the windsurfers. The photo below is from this gallery by Jimmie Hepp.
I don't have a surfing photo from yesterday, so I'm gonna use a short sequence from one of the angular spreading swell sessions from last week to illustrate once more an important aspect of the surfing etiquette.
I caught this right that had a very fast line and there's a guy on the inside paddling out.
Here he realizes that he will be on my way and starts changing his course to his right so that he can take the white water on the head and give me room to keep my line. Had he not done that, at this point I could still straighten out towards the beach to avoid the collision and give up my wave, but thanks to his respectful behavior, that wasn't necessary.
Here's the frame that shows that I made the wave (went all the way to the beach). I did pass quite close to him, but I was in control and everything seemed safe to me. Maybe not so much to him, since he looked a bit scared.
Later on, I thanked him for taking the wave on the head and apologized for the scare.
So that was a good example of an etiquette rule that was observed. There's another rule that gets overlooked a lot though and I'd like to talk about it: the priority.
Most surfers believe that as long as they are deeper than other surfers, they have priority and can go on as many waves as they want. Wrong.
That rule applies when the spot is crowded and it's virtually impossible to keep the count of whose turn it is. But if instead that is possible, the main priority rule is exactly like the one they use in the WSL contests: you just caught a wave, you have to wait until everybody else in the lineup catches one.
Doesn't matter if you paddle around everybody and sit deep. When the next wave comes, it should be the turn of the guy who's been waiting the longest.
It would be nice if all surfers would put a couple of neurons into this. Thanks.
Significant buoy readings 3am
Lanai
0.9ft @ 15s from 212° (SW)
Small stuff on the south shore, but 1f 15s can be fun.
NW
6.3ft @ 10s from 44° (NE)
Waimea
5.2ft @ 9s from 358° (N)
Pauwela
6.6ft @ 9s from 7° (N)
Still pretty good numbers at the northerly buoys, today will see overhead waves again. Stay tuned for the Hookipa report from the beach.
This swell has exceeded most forecasts. Surfline only had it at 3 feet, Pat Caldwell called for 4, surprisingly only Windguru had it right, I wonder what model they use.
Let's have a look at the fetch that created this swell to understand what happened.
The map below is from the 24th. The fetch is NNW of us and it has a bit of red indicating winds of 20+ knots.
This is the 25th, and the fetch you see straight north of us is the one responsible for yesterday's waves. No more red in it, but it has moved a bit closer to us. Just yesterday I listed the factors that increase the size of a swell for a particular location and this fetch had two of them:
- it had 24 hours of capturedness (it moved towards the target together to the waves it was generating)
- it was close to the target
It was still missing the most important component, specially for the building of the period, which is the wind strength, but it was close enough for the 9 seconds waves not to decay too much.
This last one is from the 26th and as you can see, it moved a bit to the east and that's why today we notice a bit of that into the direction at the buoy. Today we'll see more and more of that easterly component as the day goes by, together with a slow decrease in the size.
One more important factor to mention is that when the waves come from the north, Hookipa and all Maui's north shore don't get any shadowing from the other islands.
Thanks to that, yesterday even Honolua was breaking (knee to waist high at sunset).
Current wind map below shows a wide windswell fetch, a small/weak NNE fetch and a fetch down south.
MC2km maps not updated yet, it should be windy again.
No comments:
Post a Comment