Talking about foiling, I forgot to mention that the day before I was there by myself when Kai Lenny and a couple of friends (one of which was a young and nice Brazilian guy, who I later found out to be the big wave pro surfer Lucas Chianca). Kai was on his tiny prone board with footstraps and he put up an incredible show. I discovered it's quite hard to keep the focus on your ride when you have someone in the corner of your eyes doing a massive backflip up in the sky after pumping out and hitting the same wave that you are riding... Much more relaxing to watch him doing and landing aerial 360's while I was paddling out after my wave.
He's a funny abstract of a short chat.
Me: Are you going to do the Triple Crown this year?
Kai: Yes, that's the plan. How about you, what's your plan this winter?
Me: Well, I don't think I'm gonna do the Triple Crown... but that's just because I'm gonna do the surgery for my trigger finger!
The waves at Hookipa seemed mostly head high in Jimmie Hepp's daily gallery, but there were also bigger ones like this.
4am significant buoy readings
South shore
Barbers
1.6ft @ 13s from 201° (SSW)
Lanai
1.6ft @ 13s from 192° (SSW)
Southerly energy trending down at the buoys. Below is the collage of the maps of September 22 through 25. As you can see, there's no strong fetches in the first two, and that's why I was surprised about the size of the waves in the past couple of days. On the last three instead, there's those elongated ones along New Zealand that Pat Caldwell described like this:
Gales in the Tasman 9/23-24 have low odds of delivering small surf locally for Wednesday 10/2 out of 208-220 degrees.
The Tasman Sea low pressure area moved east of New Zealand 9/25-27 with highest seas aimed more zonally, or west to east, at the Americas. A long, wide fetch of marginal to sub gale winds had a direct aim at Hawaii over the 180-200 degree band. This should trend the surf up locally 10/2-3 with a peak near the seasonal average late 10/3. It should slowly decline into Saturday.
Unless some long period readings will show up later today, that energy doesn't seem to be here yet. Checking the Lahaina webcam before going will be key, as usual.
So key that I decided to wait too. I'm probably going to pass today, as it looks mostly flat like this. Windy and blown out Hookipa, here I come! Maybe...
North shore
Hanalei
1.9ft @ 11s from 321° (NW)
Waimea
2.1ft @ 11s from 328° (NW)
Mokapu
6.2ft @ 8s from 48° (NE)
NW energy trending down at the local buoys (disappeared by the remote NW ones), but there will still be head high waves at Hookipa and on eastern exposures thanks to the solid NE windswell. Feels pretty windy at 5.45am though.
Wind map at noon.
North Pacific has a small NW fetch and the windswell one.
South Pacific has a couple of narrow fetches both sides of New Zealand and a possible angular spreading (blue) one.
Morning sky.
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