Tuesday 3 5 19 morning call

A prone foiling and a longboard session for me yesterday. First one was at the harbor, inspired, as usual, by Dave Kalama.

It was pretty windy and my trigger fingers are not doing well, so I decided to prone my SUP foiling board (a friend was borrowing my 4 feet "proper" prone board). That was a bad idea. Prone foiling only makes sense when you have a board that is much smaller than what you can use while SUP foiling. If you use the same exact board, even if you leave the footstraps on (like I did) here's the big two disadvantages you feel:

- you manage to get on your feet (and in the straps) only well after than what you would have while standing up (when you are already up and in the straps). That results in the need for vigorous pumping just to get to the speed you want to have. In other words, you miss the initial part of the wave just to get enough speed.
- after you got the speed you needed, you don't have a paddle in your hand to help the carves and that, imo, feels pretty lame.

Here's a video of my third and last wave (thanks Scot), after which I decided it was worth to drive to Honolua Bay where, based on the buoy readings, I expected waist to chest high waves.

The call was correct and actually there were even some occasional shoulder high ones. In two hours I must have caught something like 25 waves and that was about 100 times more fun that the lame prone foiling I did earlier.

If it's good enough for Granger Larsen, it's good for me too.

4am significant buoy readings
South shore
No indication of southerly energy at the buoys. Yesterday it was flat and probably today it will be too.

North shore
NW
5.4ft @ 10s from 27° (NNE)

N
7.8ft @ 10s from 349° (NNW)

Mokapu
6.3ft @ 12s from 7° (N)

4.8ft @ 7s from 20° (NNE)

 

Pauwela

5.4ft @ 12s from 358° (N)

4.5ft @ 10s from 6° (N)

3.4ft @ 7s from 7° (N)

 

Lovely N energy at the buoys. The wind should be on it, even though it's only blowing 10 mph in Kahului at 5.40am and even less at my house. North shore will head high plus waves of shape progressively worse as the wind intensify, unless you find a sheltered spot. West side will be much cleaner. Below is the collage of the maps of March 2, 3 and 4, with a red arrow indicating the nearby fetch that generated most of the energy currently in the water.

Wind map at noon.

 

North Pacific has a small NW fetch and the fetch we saw in the collage above now in a more NE position (expect the swell to veer from the NE tomorrow).

 

Nothing in the South Pacific.

 

Morning sky.

PS. Selling three boards on Craigslist:
- 6.10 Parrish
- 6.1 Pang
- 7.0 Quatro foil board, great for learning how to prone foil.