Monday 6 25 18 morning call

A SUP foiling session and a SUP foiling downwinder for me yesterday. The downwinder was my attempt n.6 and what I thought I figured out the day before didn't work at all. I only had two good flights, but it was because I caught breaking waves on the reefs along the way. I did manage to make it fly a couple of other times in the open ocean, but I didn't go anywhere. The main problem so far is too much yaw in the board when giving the last couple of strokes. I might have to introduce some modifications.

The SUP foiling session at Hookipa instead was a lot of fun. Waves were in the shoulder high range and it looks like they got even bigger later on when the wind was pumping the windswell.



Massive waves in Puerto Escondido instead, as this photo taken by Sol Avila shows.


3-4am significant buoy readings
South shore
W
1.4ft @ 15s from 134° (SE)

SW
1.6ft @ 15s from 169° (SSE) 

SE
2.1ft @ 12s from 134° (SE)

Barbers
1ft @ 16s from 192° (SSW)

Lanai (from the NOAA page)

1.3f

16.7s

SSW

In the past 4-5 days, knowing the waves were small everywhere, I've been lazily waking up late and doing other things. Now the south shore is going to come back to life, so time to get on the good old routine. Let's see what we have on tap.

As usual in the presence of a relatively strong easterly windswell (5-6f 8s), the direction at the outer buoys is totally unreliable, imo. The collage of the maps of June 17, 18 and 19 shows that there were no SE fetches. Barbers is not affected by the windswell and offers a much more reliable indication.
And from that seems like a lifetime, we welcome the Lanai buoy back online! I'll immediately send an email to Surfline to add it back to their fantastic buoy page (link n.11), for the moment I took those readings from the NOAA page, but it's like comparing apples and oranges.

The fetches were pretty strong, but very remote and not perfectly oriented towards us, hence the low numbers. But 1f 16s is a lot better than nothing. I'm jonesing for clean waves (even if small), so stay tuned for a possible early beach report from the Lahaina side, even though I might check Hookipa first.



North shore
Pauwela
5.1ft @ 8s from 79° (ENE)

3.1ft @ 7s from 77° (ENE)

Windswell still up at Pauwela, conditions should be similar to yesterday on the north shore.

Wind map at noon.


North Pacific insists in offering only the windswell fetch. At least it has plenty N component in it, so it will hit Hookipa with much more energy than a pure easterly one.


South Pacific pretty active instead. Today we have a good fetch to the SE of New Zealand, a weaker one in the Tasman Sea and a very remote SSE one. I confess this is the first time I'm regularly checking that region under 60 degrees of latitude and that might be the region where a lot of "undetected" swells originated. Never stop learning.


Morning sky.