Usually, the wings of the different GoFoils are not interchangeable, unless you buy a package combo (we have ordered a few of those at Hi-Tech). But I got lucky that the screws lined up on mine (I only had to mole the hole of the Maliko tail wing a bit), so all of a sudden, instead of two, I now have four different foils with different lift, speed and maneuverability characteristics. Here are the combinations I can achieve in order of ascending lift and descending speed:
1) full Kai
2) Kai front and Maliko tail, which I will call Kaliko
3) Maliko front and Kai tail, which I will call Makai
4) full Maliko
The reason I set up a Kaliko was to have a bit more stability, but it proved to have too much lift for a shortboard: the foil wanted to come up while I was pushing up to stand up and that is not a good thing. So I switched to a full Kai and that was a lot better. I could stand up with the foil still down and then have it come up with a couple of pumps. It was still very challenging, as the shortboard is extremely sensitive (much more than a SUP) to the position of the feet. Very hard to adjust the front foot if it's not in the right place right away. I only caught a couple of waves at that point, because the tide was going too low, but I learned a lot. And once again, I'm a beginner in a new discipline. I love it.
The SUP foiling session was on the north shore instead with a full Maliko, and it was a good 9 in terms of fun. Some really long rides.
Here's a review of the Kai foil that will hopefully clarify things.
4am significant buoy readings
South shore
All signs of the southerly energy disappeared at the outer buoys, but that's because they are now registering the much stronger NW one. The swell is obviously still there and the Surfline forecast calls for 1.7f at 15s at 8am.
North shore
NW001
7.3ft @ 14s from 311° (NW)
Waimea
6.5ft @ 15s from 315° (NW)
Mokapu
3ft @ 8s from 58° (ENE)
The windswell quickly went down at Mokapu, so today it should all about the NW swell. Let's have a look at the graphs of the NW and Waimea buoys below. I put an arrow to indicate the peak of the swell at the NW buoy. By applying GP's rule of thumb for the travelling time (16h @ 16s +/- 1 hour per second of period), we can expect the swell to peak in Maui during the day, like the red dotted line I drew. Doesn't really matter when it will exactly peak, there will be pretty big waves all day and the conditions will depend and change a lot with the wind, which we will examine just below. Stay tuned for a size report from Hookipa soon.
The graph also shows that Waimea rose in the afternoon yesterday and below is a picture of Pipeline on the right that shows a double overhead set. On the left, Ala Moana doesn't show much instead, but I wrote already how inconsistent south swells are. Sometimes you have to wait 20+ minutes for a set.
Wind map at noon shows the start of the Konas (red circle).
This is the map at 3pm, that show the Kona hitting the north shore much stronger.
Here are the two model at the bottom of the Windguru page. The first one shows strong kona much earlier, but we can already say that is wrong, as there's no wind at all at 5am.
North shore shows the same three fetches for the fourth day in a row:
- a small west fetch associated with typhoon Lan that now has moved further north.
- a large but not too intense NW fetch (vicinity will be a factor)
- a shrinking easterly windswell fetch
South shore shows a small southerly fetch just to keep flatness away.
Morning sky shows the approaching front just NW of the islands, but Oahu is already getting some rain.
That is shown in the radar picture.
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