These photos I took this morning in a 15 minutes stop on the hill at Lanes are just too good. Got to share them for your pleasure.
I picked this one as the best. Unfortunately, I don't know the guy, but maybe he'll get to see it on this blog... I would die to have a photo like this...
The wind was still light Kona and the, as you can see here, the waves were pretty clean. I surfed Kanaha and had a blast in perfect head high peelers. Extremely fun.
One more photo on the main page: lines at Lanes.
Wait a moment. Is it called Lanes because they look like lanes? Why not call it Lines then? I got to find out where the name is from...
Two (maybe three) words about yesterday's sesh.
As forecasted the conditions were perfect for longboard sailing. Unfortunately, they were perfect for surfing too, so there were just too many surfers at lowers. I had to sail uppers and I caught a bunch walk to the nose kind of rights.
At the end of my second session, I noticed that the weird wave was going off. The weird wave is called like this because when it's trade winds it pretty much breaks traveling upwind. It's a gnarly wave (pretty shallow) with some strong currents. You don't want to get stuck there when it's big and windy.
Yesterday, instead, it was light Kona and, conseguentely, pretty clean. I caught a first head high one and it was good. So I decided to catch another one.
I got on the spot and the wind died completely. I saw this one coming. It was a little overhead high at about 30 yards (a yard is just like a meter... just a bit shorter) from me. It looked like I was in the right spot and I thought I could catch it anyway, despite the lack of wind. But that thing jacked up like a little Teahupoo. It sucked the water in front of it and I started moving backwards with it.
That thing got almost mast high by the time it got to me. I thought I was going to wipe out so bad... The drop looked impossible.
I was still going backwards being sucked on the face of the wave, when it felt like my board was at a 70 degrees angle and the free fall started. I don't know how I made it. Sure, I must have done something right, like pushing down on the mast foot and shifting my weight on the front foot for the drop and then shifting it on the back foot just before getting to the bottom, but for sure there's at least two other factors that saved my ass:
1) the shape of the board MUST be good to handle such a steep drop... thanks Jeff Timpone. That board rocks.
2) the ocean just decided not to punish me. I prolly was in the only spot where I could have done the drop. The luck (or karma) factor was enormous.
I'm sure somebody in the near lineup at lowers saw it and I really hope that one day somebody I know will go:"hey, I saw that drop on the weird wave the other day..."
I wonna know how it looked from the side. I need to know how vertical my board was. Not that it would change the exhilarating experience, but it would be nice to know if the feeling I had was true.
ANYWAY... boy was I long? Yesterday was fun, today was fun and tomorrow's forecast calls for big waves and light NE wind. Could be a good day for longboard sailing at the outer reef of uppers. Better go to sleep... stoked as usual.
Also because I just checked the NW buoy: 14 feet, 15 seconds at 9pm... holy shmoly!
