Friday, November 25, 2016

11 25 16 morning call

Couple of sessions for me yesterday. With the Honolua contest taking a day off, the show was stolen by the 8th or 9th Paia Bay Invitational.

A move like this should have been enough for Michelle to secure the title.

** sorry, the picture has been requested to be removed. Sadly this society evolved in a way in which if you expose some body parts that are not supposed to be exposed just because you're having fun with your friends, someone can have a bad judgment of you as a professional. **

 But not only she showed an amazing physical form, she also totally ripped!


Instead the victory went to this Gareth Bale imitation clown.


Yeah, yeah, he produced some decent surfing too, but I think the whole thing was rigged.
The victory speech was hilarious, I'll give him that.


The lovely shark was ripping too.

Ulli found a gem.

 
 And we finish with Michelle again, having a blast and riding that Wave Storm as good as Jamie O'Brien.

4am significant buoy readings

South shore
Lanai
1.6ft @ 13s from 230° (SW)

The energy from that Tasman Sea fetch from a week ago is still hanging in there, even though the period went down to 13 seconds. I'm been postponing my lesson not because of the size (that yesterday was enough), but because the strong trades create an onshore flow from the very early morning in Lahaina. Once again, if it's not good teaching conditions, I'd rather not teach.
Tomorrow we should start seeing a reinforcement due to the energy from when the fetch moved east of New Zealand and we'll see how the wind will be.

North Shore
NW
9ft @ 9s from 93° (E)
3.7ft @ 15s from 311° (NW)

N
2.3ft @ 18s from 325° (NW)
 
Hanalei
2.8ft @ 18s from 321° (NW)

Pauwela
7.7ft @ 10s from 64° (ENE)
5.9ft @ 7s from 60° (ENE)
2.9ft @ 13s from 4° (N)
1.8ft @ 20s from 326° (NW)
 
Below is the Surfline offshore swell forecast for Maui's north shore (link 15). I believe if you're not a subscriber you see three days, so that's all I'm gonna show (otherwise, they get mad at me).
The yellow swell is a new NW one that will pick up all day today and hang around tomorrow too.
Hovering with the mouse on the arrows, you would find out that the prediction for 8am is 1.9f 20s from 328, the one for 2pm is 3.3f 18s from 326 and the one for 8pm is 4.6f 16s from 329.

The buoy readings are kind of in line with it, with these two little but important differences:
- the swell is probably a little early compared to that graph, since the 4am reading for Pauwela is already 1.8f 20s
- the "poor" 3.7f 15s reading at the NW buoy makes me think that the size will be less than predicted.
But let's not leave it only to the WW3 prediction (in its Surfline version) and dig in a little more into the analysis.
Here's the words of Pat Caldwell:
"The next low pressure system in the Kamchatka corner was stronger. It deepened to storm-force late on 11/21. The center tracked into the Bering Sea but the broad gyre allowed extreme winds just south of the Aleutians to the dateline. On 11/23, the system has already left the Hawaii swell window.

The jason altimeter at 00 and 06Z 2016-11-23 showed seas and swell a notch higher than estimated by the Wave Watch III with GFS input winds for an area close to the great circle path to Hawaii. The travel distance was beyond 1600 nm and highest seas were aimed NE of Hawaii, so this event should stay below the November average, but make it at least to the October average.

Long period forerunners are due Thursday night (don't forget this is for Oahu!). The event should build Friday morning from 325-345 degrees, peak late Friday, and drop on Saturday from 325-350 degrees. "

Below are the maps of Nov 21 and 22. The fetch to look at is the one in the NW corner. As you can see it didn't move at all towards us because of the block of the strong high pressure, but at least the winds were strong up there. The direction is less than ideal for Honolua Bay, but notice how uncle Pat indicates the direction: with a range like 325-345. When you see a forecast or a buoy reading, it only shows one direction. That is the main one, the one associated with the most energy of the swell. But in that same swell there will be energy coming from slightly different directions. So, if that range indicated by Pat Caldwell is correct, the more northerly sets will actually make it Honolua, specially the longer period ones that can better wrap around Molokai.

Honestly, by looking at the fetch in those maps below, I don't really see such a northerly component. The swell is 311 degrees at the NW buoy and 320 at the Hanalei one, we're lucky if we're gonna get some energy from 330, I think. And the shadow line from Molokai is 335.
Next swell (Sunday/Monday) was weaker and won't offer anything good for the Bay.

So, flat morning and contest on hold is my call, with a possible start after the late morning high tide. The rest of the forecast looks pretty bad with the exception of tomorrow morning maybe and the last two days of the waiting period Dec 2nd and 3rd which should see a big (10f 15s on Saturday) swell that, despite being from 318, could be big enough to get in there.

Btw, today is also the first day of the waiting period of the Sunset Beach contest. I am not going to get into that call!
Also, I just finished watching the Haleiwa contest. Top three surf contests I've ever watched, I'd say. I absolutely loved how all those new (for me, at least) surfers were tearing apart those mean walls. Joan Duru, Marc Lacomare, Ethan Ewing are the three that impressed me the most. The judging in the final was uncharacteristically bad, since the difference between John John and the rest of the pack was much more than that ridiculous fraction of a point.

Nov 21
 
Nov 22

 

Current wind map shows:
- a small fetch in the NW corner
- the windswell fetch
- a very strong fetch in the Tasman Sea. Fiji has been pumping and that is going to be another out of season massive swell. Got some spare change? Book yourself a flight for next week if you can handle 10f 15s at Cloudbreak on Wednesday.

 
NAM3km map at noon looks exactly like it has looked for this whole week and keeps showing strong easterly trades.

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