Tuesday 12 4 18 morning call

A SUP foiling and a wave windfoiling session for me yesterday. Second one was so much fun that I had to brag with Kai Lenny who came to Hi-Tech in the afternoon.
"Funny, I did that too today! Pretty fun!", he said.
"Are you using a windsurfing foil and was it pretty windy?".
"Yes".
"Nice, but try with a surfing foil and light wind next time".
The photo of the day is of the regular windsurfing kind at Hookipa from this gallery by Jimmie Hepp.


4am significant buoy readings
South shore (back to analyzing this first, so I can get it out of the way and focus on the north shore).
Lanai
1ft @ 14s from 221° (SW)

Lanai is an extremely sensitive (and protected) buoy and it insists in reporting something from the SW.
Unfortunately the Ala Moana webcam doesn't show much at all.


North shore
NW001
4.7ft @ 8s from 63° (ENE)

3.5ft @ 11s from 338° (NNW)

2.8ft @ 6s from 101° (ESE)

0.5ft @ 23s from 45° (NE)

Hanalei
3.1ft @ 12s from 324° (NW)

Waimea
2.5ft @ 12s from 322° (NW)

Pauwela
5.8ft @ 7s from 58° (ENE)

2.2ft @ 13s from 330° (NW)

I didn't filter any of the readings of the NW001 buoy (I usually do that for all the buoys, but Pauwela), because I wanted to point your attention to that 0.5f 23s reading. It says from 45 degrees, but that's obviously wrong and influenced by the windswell oscillation. At 23s it can only be the forerunning energy of the large swell we're expecting soon, so consider it coming from the NW.
That said, it is unlikely that we're going to see much of this swell today and if anything only in the late afternoon.

As reported in the epic post Buoys to Maui travel times and Maui's shadow lines, the GP's rule of thumb is only applicable up to 20s, so we have to check the table that shows a travel time of 10.7h.
So, if everything I wrote so far is correct, that half a foot of 23s energy should reach Maui around in the early afternoon. Which makes me think that we'll eventually start seeing something significant only in the late afternoon. In the meantime, there's still 2-3f 12-13s from the previous swell in the water plus the windswell, so plenty head high-ish blown out waves to play with anyway. I'll report from Hookipa before 7.30am.

Below is the Windguru table that I report to show two things:
1) it's going to get windy for at least 10 day.
2) the wave forecast is totally unreliable. At 2pm it shows 7f 24s which cracks me up. In 18 years in Hawaii, I've never seen such a thing reported by a buoy. So my recommendation is not to use Windguru for the wave forecast, but to use the Surfline offshore swell prediction. For the north shore, the link in the GP's meteo website list is n. 15. Here, it's this page. If you don't have a subscription, you only see the first three days.


Wind map at noon.


North Pacific's strong NW fetch still in place.


South Pacific is trying to do something with a couple of weak fetches oriented towards us. Wouldn't lose the sleep on them.


Morning call.