Wednesday 1 3 18 morning call

Shortboard and windsurfing sessions for me yesterday, both at Hookipa. The windsurfers hit the water in the afternoon during which the waves got progressively bigger, as this photo by Jimmie Hepp from this gallery shows.


I took out the new camera (thanks again to all the donors) and its first shot goes to brother Scott, who knows how to go down in style.


4am significant buoy readings
South shore
No southerly energy at the buoys, the Surfline forecast calls for 1.1f 10s.

North shore
NW101
6.9ft @ 13s from 305° (WNW)

Waimea
7.4ft @ 13s from 322° (NW)

Pauwela
6.1ft @ 14s from 325° (NW)

2.8ft @ 8s from 54° (ENE)

2.4ft @ 6s from 68° (ENE)

New NW swell peaked during the night, the numbers at the buoys are pretty solid. Nothing huge, 6f 14s will provide sets occasionally up to double overhead, even mast high for the windsurfers in the afternoon with the addition of the windswell peaks. Stay tuned for a 6.30am beach report from Hookipa.

Let's have a look at the fetch that generated this swell. Below are the maps of Dec 31 and Jan 1. As you can see, the fetch is not as west as the previous days one that generated the WNW swell of the last couple of days. That means that we won't get blocked as much. The NW101 buoy reads 6.9ft @ 13s from 305° (WNW) and 305 happens to be exactly the shadow line from Hookipa to Molokai.

Here's an important thing some surfers are not aware of. When you see a direction of a swell either at the buoys or in a forecast, the swell will not be only from exactly that direction. That's just the dominant direction, the one that has the most energy associated with. But the sets will come from a range of directions around the dominant one. In this case, for example, Pat Caldwell indicates a range of 310-330, so we should not get much blockage at all. The past couple of days, the range was 280-330, and that's why the consistency of the sets was low: the more westerly sets didn't make it to Maui's north shore, only the more northerly ones did.


Below is the collage of the graphs of NW101, Waimea, Pauwela and the Surfline forecast. The swell peaked during the night locally, but it's still going to be pretty solid all day.


Wind map at noon shows easterly trades.

North Pacific shows yet again a WNW fetch.


South Pacific doesn't offer anything of relevance.


Morning sky.