I met a fellow windfoiler and switched gear with him. He had a Gong SUP foil and a regular windsurfing board and once again, foiling with the box all the way at the back felt borderline boring compared to the board I'm using. Hard to describe the difference, with the box in the back it feels like slalom sailing; with the box more in the front it feels like balancing on a rope and with much more ability/need to do all the micro adjustments to keep it foiling. Way more engaging and fun, really.
I'm also now able to use the harness while foiling, but that reduces my ability of doing those micro adjustments, thus I foil a lot better without using it. As a result, half an hour is all I can do and I'm just fine with that. If you're curious, from the moment I park to the moment I hit the water, it takes me 15 minutes to get everything ready. Might be a couple of minutes less if you keep your foil attached to the board at all times (I take them apart, but I got myself a portable drill to screw it on fast).
Talking about foils, yesterday at Hi-Tech we received a bunch of Jimmy Lewis boards fresh out of his Vietnamise oven. Here's Marlon upon delivery posing next to a 8'5"x33.5". The other sizes are 7'3"x30", 7'9"x32" and these are specialized SUP foil boards, meaning:
- they have the box for the foil already
- they have the footstrap attachments
- they don't have regular fin boxes
I believe those are going to be hot items during our annual summer sale that this year will happen on July 15th.
Pretty much at the same time, we also received a bunch of Surftech longboards for the rental fleet. Expect some brand new Takayama In The Pink to be available as early as this morning, while in the meantime we also already added two Firewire Greedy Beaver's 6.0 and 6.6. Pretty spectacular surfboards rental fleet, really.
Nice initiative from DaKine and Casey Hauser: free windsurf lessons for kids every Sunday during July 2017 at Kanaha from 11 to 1.
3am significant buoy readings
South shore
W
2.2ft @ 12s from 129° (ESE)
SW
2.4ft @ 11s from 163° (SSE)
1.3ft @ 17s from 126° (ESE)
SE
1.9ft @ 12s from 154° (SSE)
1.6ft @ 17s from 162° (SSE)
There we go, now the 17s energy is magically coming from a southerly direction which means that I was correct in what I affirmed in yesterday's call. I don't even look at the direction indicated by those outer buoys anymore: if there's a strong windswell hitting them (and there is, I just don't report it), they're useless. How can you then know where the swells come from?
You look at the fetches map. Too lazy to go back to the post of 7 days ago? No worries, below is the map of last Saturday. Double fetches east of New Zealand. The upper/smaller one had been in that place for quite a few days (for that, you do have to go back to the past posts) and I believe it's responsible for the lovely energy that graced us all week (started at 15s and is now down at 12s). The lower/bigger one I believe is the one responsible for the new 17s pulse.
Pat Caldwell indicates other sources for this, but this time I don't agree with him, and propose my version instead. For 99% of you, this doesn't matter at all. What matters is that there's waves. Check the webcams and my beach report later for details about conditions and size.
North shore
Pauwela
5.8ft @ 8s from 51° (ENE)
Solid windswell reading, Hookipa should have windy/blown out waves too and Pavils is going to be packed.
Wind map at noon. My observations so far: this model does underestimate the wind on the north shore a bit.
North Pacific shows only a narrow windswell fetch.
South Pacific keeps providing with two nice fetches: a Tasman Sea one and a closer than usual south one.
Trades sky and another stunning day is on its way. Unreal weather this summer.
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