Thursday 6 8 17 morning call

Just a surf session in Lahaina for me yesterday, but I got my hands on a tuttle-ed windsurf board on which to try foiling. And since I don't have a photo of the day, here's a 9 minutes video of some of the Maui peeps that are involved in the foiling movement. I like it because I pretty much know everyone in it and not all of them are top athlete that make it look deceivingly easy.

It is in fact pretty hard to learn, but all those guys that did learn are seriously stoked about it and now that I've felt the foiling feel while windsurfing, I can understand why. I'll stick to my strategy and learn windfoiling first and then give the surfing another try, hoping that it'll be a little easier then.



5am significant buoy readings
South shore
W
1.8ft @ 13s from 107° (ESE)
SW
1ft @ 12s from 145° (SE)

0.9ft @ 15s from 227° (SW)

SE
1.4ft @ 15s from 167° (SSE)

Still some energy coming from the south at the outer buoys. Once again, do not give the directions any importance whatsoever, all those buoys are influenced by the windswell and reporting wrong directions for the smaller southerly oscillations. One that might be correct though, is the almost 1f 15s at the SW buoy, since a week ago there was a little fetch in the Tasman Sea, so a SW direction is where that energy would come from. Wonna see it again? Here is the map of last Thursday, May 1st. The energy generated from that fetch in that moment will have to have travelled east of Fiji to get here.


Now, does knowing the direction going to help choose the spot where to go? Not really in this case, since it's such small energy. You're better off looking at the webcams and see what's out there. I always look at the Lahaina one, but there's plenty in Kihei and other parts of the island (all linked in the webcams section in the right column of this blog). Here's the biggest set I've seen so far (looks chest/shoulder high), but there's plenty smaller moments. Also, yesterday the size went down noticeably at low tide which today happens at 8.26am over there and it's a negative one. That means that it's going to be pretty low for at least 1.5h before and after the peak, i.e. from 7 to 10am.


Here we go, here's another good set (I have the cam in half of the screen and I check it while I write this).


North Shore
Pauwela
2.8ft @ 7s from 81° (E)

2.4ft @ 5s from 72° (ENE)

Pretty much no waves on the north shore with those readings.
8am wind map shows light trades


2pm wind map shows slightly stronger trades, but still below the usual 20-25 knots.


Almost no waves generated for us in the North Pacific. That's gonna be the normal situation till September, but there can be exceptions at any time.


The South Pacific is where the wave generation should happen in the summertime, and there are a couple of fetches today, but nothing major. I would have not noticed the fetch all the way down below, without the help of the Meteogram map (right half of the picture) that automatically spots the fetches of wind oriented towards us along the great circle rays.
I didn't do any calculation, but I'd say we need to add at least a couple of extra days of travel from down there. Which also mean extra energy decay, so the fetch needs to be really strong for the energy to reach us.


Interesting forward slash of clouds between us and Molokai, I doubt that will do anything at all, so it looks like another stunning day is on its way.