Thursday 6 28 18 morning call

Another Wednesday off and another spectacular day of action for me, with three shortboard and one longboard sessions. As you guessed, I really wanted to surf my shortboard, as it was a long time since last time I did that (might have been the day of the injury at Restaurants). Here's a little nugget that satisfied my appetite for turns.


After all that low performance surfing, I went to Thousand Peaks and played the waiting game on the wind which was howling offshore. Got lucky again and scored a wonderful one hour session with mostly light offshore or no wind. This wave belonged to the first category.

Gavin got some good ones too.


Always a pleasure to share a session with Mr. Crowe.


Back to the north shore, with not enough juice left in the tank for a downwinder (breaking waves still have my preference), I got tempted into a possible windsurfing session by the observation of the Hookipa windsurfers from the distance.
Unfortunately, once I pulled in the parking lot, I noticed a pretty bad chop on the face, so I wisely passed on that. Might have got better at sunset, but I don't really do sunset sessions anymore, as I much prefer to go to sleep very early to hit the very early morning waves.


4am significant buoy readings
South shore
W
3.3ft @ 14s from 158° (SSE)

SW
3.7ft @ 14s from 160° (SSE)

SE
3.8ft @ 14s from 165° (SSE)

Barbers
2.5ft @ 17s from 185° (S)

2.2ft @ 14s from 195° (SSW)

 

Lanai (NOAA)

2.3f

15.4s

S

 

Today should be the peak of the current south swell and the outer buoys in fact show relatively high numbers. What they (inexplicably) fail to show is the longer period energy that Barbers registers too. Surfline hasn't added Lanai back to their page (link n.11, gonna send another email), so I reported the NOAA indication, but I consider that pretty much useless, as it always only reports the dominant swell, not the multiple different swells in the water.

Below is the collage of the maps of June 20,21 and 22. The two fetches you see on the first one are the sources of the two swells recorded by Barbers. In the next few days, the 14s one should gradually go down in period, while the 17s should fade too because the fetch turned to aim east of us, but they should both still provide (smaller) waves to our south facing shores, before a new low SSW swell (coming from the Tasman Sea fetch we observed in the last few days) will kick in as the new week starts. Beach report coming up before 6am (I hope).

 

North shore
Pauwela

6.6ft @ 9s from 56° (ENE)

4.6ft @ 6s from 64° (ENE)

 

Pretty elevated 9s windswell at Pauwela, check the graph below to see what caused those head and a half waves you saw in the windsurfing picture above. The blue line is the 9s component (coming from the very back of the fetch, while the shorter period comes from the head of it) and what makes it grow so big on the Hookipa's reef is the unblocked direction of around 56 degrees.

 

If you remember the windswell fetches I outline every morning in the fetches maps, that should be no surprise for you. It sadly keeps being a surprise for most of the Hookipa windsurfers, I'd rather be informed instead so that I have the elements to make my decisions in terms of sessions. And that's pretty much what this blog is about.

 

Wind map at noon.


North Pacific only has a well oriented windswell fetch.


South Pacific looking good with one large fetch SE of New Zealand and a smaller/closer one. Other than those four days of tininess last week, this summer has been pretty good so far, imo.


Morning sky.