Wednesday 1 10 18 morning call

Longboard and SUP foiling sessions for me yesterday. Windsurfing did happen at Hookipa, and the waves looked pretty good. Photo by Jimmie Hepp from this gallery.


Here's again Dusty's fall at Backdoor. Last news I read is that he fractured skull and jaw and will need surgery after they're done draining fluid out of his lungs. I'm pretty sure there will be more helmets in the lineup at Pipe after this accident.


4am significant buoy readings
South shore
No indication of southerly energy at the buoys, and that's what the Surfline forecast indicates too.
But the W buoy reads 2.4ft @ 15s from 265° (W), so once again Kihei could get some waves. Both Cove's webcams in my list are down, but I use the two at Charlie Young to observe the shore break and make a guess on the size.

North shore
NW101
6.3ft @ 15s from 319° (NW)

Hanalei
4.9ft @ 17s from 312° (NW)

Waimea
4ft @ 17s from 317° (NW)

Pauwela (5am)

4.3ft @ 8s from 81° (E)

3.5ft @ 9s from 66° (ENE)

2.4ft @ 16s from 317° (NW)

2.1ft @ 12s from 336° (NNW)

 

New NW swell on the rise at all the buoys. Below are the graphs of the four reported ones and the Surfine forecast. The scales are not the same, just observe how the Pauwela's rise is much slower than the other ones. That's because we are down the line in the island chain, but also because the swell started much more west that it is now at the NW buoy (red circle in the direction graph), so we get blocked a bit, at least at the beginning. The Surfline forecast had it locally at 2.4f 18 at 2am and 4.5f 16s at 8am, reality might be a bit under that. The leftover previous NW energy is getting pretty weak while windswell is not too high either, it might be a small start of the day. Stay tuned for a beach report.

 

The forecast graph also show a bigger swell peaking Friday morning at 10f 14s, but that's nothing compared to the weekend swell that should reach 22f 18s from 324 Saturday night. The HSA organizers promptly called the Legends of the Bay contest on for both days of weekend.

Wind map at noon stubbornly keeps showing easterly trades.

North Pacific main fetch of interest is the strong one off Japan. Weekend's swell will come from that, so another westerly start, but it will move in a more favorable position tomorrow.


South Pacific has a small weak fetch.


Morning sky shows the very tail of a front approaching Kauai. Thanks to the easterly trades (and the high pressure that generated them), the weather has been heavenly all over the island since the start of the year.