Friday 7 7 17 morning call

Surf session with micro waves (I like them in the ocean much more than in the kitchen) in the morning and windfoiling in strong wind in the afternoon was my day in the water yesterday. Windfoiling overpowered is not that much fun (for my tastes), but I got to try a GoFoil Maliko foil and I was blown away by how much easier it is. Of course, like everything else in surfing (and in life!), when you gain something somewhere you lose something somewhere else and I think I know already what it is in this case, but hopefully I get to borrow that foil today and try it under my board, so that I could do a proper comparison and report tomorrow.

In the meantime, this is the first Hi-Tech rental customer that scored one of the brand new Takayama In The Pink 9.3 we just added to the fleet. We're keeping them for experienced surfers that rent for more than a week. But if you're a local experienced surfer that want to try it in order to eventually buy one, of course we can arrange that too.


3am significant buoy readings
South shore
W
1.8ft @ 12s from 140° (SE)

SW
1.8ft @ 12s from 166° (SSE)

SE
2.6ft @ 12s from 128° (ESE)

Sorry to disappoint you guys, but no signs just yet at the outer buoys of the new south swells predicted to arrive today. I'm not surprised a bit, because:
1) the surfline forecast below (based like pretty much every other forecast on the WW3 model) only shows 1f 15s at 8am today (with 2f 15 at 8am tomorrow)
2) small long period energy could be in the water already, but we know how those outer buoys are reluctant to register it, if being hit by other swells (which they are, by the windswell)
3) the onset of south swell is always painfully slow and inconsistent


But if you follow this blog you have an extra tool to predict the arrival of a swell: the analysis of the originating fetches. Pat Caldwell describes them with words (hopefully one day they'll provide him with some graphic tools) and I'm not aware of any other website that does the same. You can do that analysis yourself at anytime by scrolling down to 7 days ago, but in this case here's a collage of four days of South Pacific fetches, starting from Friday June 30.

As you can see (and if you can't, click on the picture to enlarge it), that day the only fetch was one in the Tasman sea. The swell it generated is the blue line in the Surfline forecast above, much smaller than the orange line and only arriving tonight.

The orange line instead is the southerly swell that was predicted for today, and the originating southerly fetch only appears on the map on Saturday July 1st. Being NE of New Zealand, which means closer than usual to us, the WW3 model calculated only 6 days to get to us, and that's why it's in the forecast for today. That fetch got much stronger on Sunday July 2nd and that's why you see 2f in the forecast for tomorrow.


In order to pin point the arrival of new south swells, the analysis of the Samoa buoy is another important tool. Unfortunately I only remembered to save its graph yesterday, and the first day shown on it is Tuesday July 4th. On that day (and the one after), the swell was well over 6f 14s. At that period, the Buoys to Maui travel times and Maui's shadow lines post (search the labels section for access at any time) shows a travel time of 4.2 days. That means that we will receive that energy (minus what gets lost on the way) tomorrow and that is in line with the 2f 15s forecast, hopefully even a bit bigger. FYI: swells slightly increase their period when travelling, while at the same time they lose size. Had I saved the graph a day earlier, we could see the onset of the swell at that buoy and have a better guess for the onset locally, but I didn't do that, so we only have to wait and see.

My opinion is that we will see the swell slowly rise throughout today, but with small sizes and low consistency. Check the buoy page (link n.11) during the day and you'll see some long period readings appear at one point. But don't forget that the swell will probably be in the local waters before that, since the it takes a bit of size for the windswell beaten buoys to record it.

In the end, the webcam and my beach report are going to be the best indication for size, consistency and conditions.


North shore
Pauwela
3.5ft @ 8s from 75° (ENE)

Flat to tiny is my prediction for Hookipa. And blown out, of course, with a 4.45am reading of 12(7-18)mph from 74 degrees.

Wind map at noon shows windfoiling potential.


North Pacific offers a small NW fetch all the way up in the Kamchatka corner, but I don't see much in the forecast.


South Pacific even worse today, with no fetches at all.


Not a single cloud in the our morning sky and another stunning day is on its way. The weather has been unreal. No trades in this time of the year would mean hot temperature and need for A/C, strong trades would mean rain squalls on the north shore and disturbed surfing conditions on the south shore, instead we're getting just moderate trades and every day has been stunning.