epic surf + new blog sponsor

Classic Hawaii surfing condition Tuesday morning, thanks to the light offshore Kona wind.



Beautiful! And...


...covered. Hey, where's his head?


Oh, there it is.


Clean overhead open faces.


"Hey look, that guy is getting barreled!"




Hands in the water are so important for tight fast turns.
That's why I can't watch SUP surfers who don't use the paddle when they surf. It's like they have the big advantage of a very long hand and they don't use it!


Mini sequence dedicated to a body surfer.


Technically, the purest for of surfing. Or at least the closest to how dolphins surf.


Deep in the pit. That and the consequent wipeout must feel really good. You got no board and, as long as you don't hit the reef, nothing hard will hit/cut you.
One big advantage of body surfers (the guy in these photos told me): once in a while a big macker set catches all surfers by surprise and they all get caught on the inside.
He, instead, can dive under the waves and be the only one who made it through.
For a few minutes he's the king of the spot alone on the outside and can choose whatever wave he wants.
That must feel good too.


He can't throw all that spray though.


Kaleo riding an avalanche. Even though I should re-touch most of these photos with photoshop (but I don't have the time), I really like some clearly overexposed shots like this.


I'd rather be out and take more shots like this than spending time re-touching them with photoshop!


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I'd like to welcome a new blog sponsor. You'll find the text link under the banner section on the right.
Current prices are $40/month for a banner and $15/month for a text link.
Blog readers are continuously growing. Here's a graph of the quarterly traffic. Q4 2008 had 55k unique visitors and 77k page loads.


So if you like this blog and would like to support it, help it grow by emailing its address to your friends and posting it on forums, on your blog, etc.
And don't forget the donations. Feel like a post is worth a buck? I'll take it! The paypal donate icon is on the right.
A hundred little donations of one dollar and I'll get the money of the new lens back. You like those duck dive shots, don't you?

Report
As shown, yesterday morning the surfing was awesome. In the afternoon, I sailed Kanaha with a light Kona. Fun, but the waves were barely head high and inconsistent (the swell was on the way down).
This morning it was again very fun surfing and even smaller (but super clean) waves with light kona wind.
Now, wednesday afternoon, the kona is blowing stronger (gusts up to 24 in Kanaha), but the new swell is not here yet.

Forecast
Here's the surfline NW buoy reading at noon.


12 feet at 18 seconds, but from a little more than 300 degrees.
The waimea buoy just started to sense 2-3 feet, 20 seconds forerunners and consequently the Oahu webcams are starting to show some long period head high sets.
That means that, I don't think we'll get anything big to sail in Kanaha this afternoon. There will be sets in the late afternoon up the coast towards Hookipa, but for the Kanaha wave sailing action, we'll have to wait until tomorrow.
I hope I'm wrong and I'll go check anyway...

And tomorrow classic show at Lanes with strong Kona and huge waves. Get your ass on the hill if you're in Maui.
Get your fingers on the mouse if you're not, since all Maui bloggers will be there filming and taking photos.
Mmm... all of them?!? Not really sure about that... stay tuned!

birthday, surf and a few random beautiful women

Wonna know what I think about birthdays?

Just like Christmas, New year's eve and all the other man-made stupid "special" days... I can't really stand them.
I said it already: for me, every single day is special and I live it as such.
Said this, if we look at birthdays strictly as an excuse to party, then I'm totally fine with that... specially if the party is already organized by another way more socially active friend who is born the same day!

Saturday was a fun night at Jaques in Paia and here's my favorite photo of it: the French class and beauty of Carine.
Nice classy grab of the glass, by the way!


This one was taken during the Italy party instead: the beautiful girlfriend of a friend of mine.
Good for him!


Back to Jaques, I'm sure the windsurfers will appreciate this P-celebrity trio: Pritchard, Prior, Polakow having a good old time.


The rest of the photos are in this Facebook album.
And since we're at it, let me clarify my Facebook policy.
When I started, I was saying yes to all friends requests. "Sure, why not?", I thought.
But soon I realized that the more "friends" you have, the more crowded your updates get and honestly... to know that somebody that I don't really know and that I never even met is: "getting ready to go the gym" on the other side of the world... doesn't really thrill me that much!
Specially if it's written in Finnish or in another language I don't even speak!

So, I radically changed my policy and now I accept only friendship requests of people that I really know. Of course there's exceptions... good looking ones.

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As a well appreciated birthday gift, I woke up Saturday morning not feeling sick for the first time in a week and, even if still pretty weak, I paddled out to catch a few waves at Hookipa. Man, it felt so good to be in the water...
Here's a few pics I took that day.


How's the new lens?


Good, uh?


Nothing beats a sunny day with glassy waves.


'zactly.


Ripping kid number one.


Yeah, that's the kind of sun shade I need too.


Ripping kid number two. Ah, to be that young again...


And now the FORECAST, allegedly one of the most appreciated feature of this blog (at least by the Mauians).
As the monday afternoon weather map shows, the waters are starting to be stirred in the north Pacific. That's the first pulse that will hit Wednesday. Then there will be another one Friday, but that doesn't mean that Thursday is going to be small...


Thank god Pat Caldwell is back (brah, we missed you). Read what he says, there's always something to learn from him. For example the word rambunctious.

And now a couple of random thoughts to wrap up this Monday post:
1) I surfed two hours in the morning and wave sailed in super very light wind two hours in the afternoon. God, it feels good to be back to a "normal" life again!
2) this blog rocks.

boards from the past + humongous swell on the horizon

1 11 09: Post update.
I emailed Jimmy Lewis about that red board and that's what he replied (thanks Jimmy):

Hi Giampaolo, Thanks for sending that. That red board was MY board that I rode in Fuerta Ventura when Pascal Maka, Eric Beale, Fred Haywood and myself broke the absolute world speed record previously held by Crossbow. I did 36.31 knots in that event and was number 3 in the world at that time.
Thanks and aloha, Jimmy

I did a little research on that and here's an abstract I took from this article on Boards magazine.

1986, July 21st – Sotavento, Fuerteventura – Windsurfing becomes the fastest sailing sport in the world as Pascal Maka breaks the fourteen year dominance of Crossbow II with a speed of 38.86kts on a Jimmy Lewis board and Gaastra sail. Three others also break the record: Eric Beale (36.73), Jimmy Lewis (36.31) and Fred Haywood (36.13).

I told you guys that there was some history in there!

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Allright, I'm still out of the water for this damn cold, so I found the time for this post.

For some reasons that I can't explain (so please, don't ask details), I lately had the opportunity to visit what I would not hesitate to call an historical site in Maui.

How's that pile of history?


And now some close ups. Twin fin speed board... to make it looser in the waves??!!


Speed board with built-in (and slowing-down) speed meter. I guess there were no GPS back then...


Another unbelievable speed shape. Good luck with the jibes on that one!


I remember I saw that red Jimmy Lewis on some magazine back then, but I can't remember why, and who used it... can anybody help?


And what about this one? You can see there is a fin box in there... what happened, did the shaper die?


Nobody uses these asymmetrical anymore...


Wrong! This guy sails Kanaha all the times. Notice the mylar sail and the original boom!


I like symmetrical shapes better.


Allright, let's talk forecast.
Here's what the NOAA site says for Oahu:
Outlook through Wednesday Jan 14: the current west northwest swell will continue to decline into the weekend. A new advisory level northwest swell is expected to arrive on Sunday, peak early Monday, then slowly lower through Tuesday. A humongous northwest swell is expected to arrive Tuesday night and peak on Wednesday at very high levels.

Humongous?!?! I never read anything like that on that site! With Pat Caldwell on vacation they must be trying to keep up the entertaining factor...
Are they right? I think they are about the size, but on a wrong day!
Have a look at the modelled map for Thursday 15, in fact.


Many factors have to simultaneously contribute for a giant swell in Hawaii. Here are some of the most important:
1) the fetch has to be long and wide
2) the fetch has to be captured (moving at the same speed and in the same direction of the swell it's generating, so that it keeps pushing the same growing seas)
3) the wind in the fetch must be extremely strong
4) the fetch has to be close enough to the islands to minimize the energy dissipation
5) the fetch has to be oriented towards this islands

In this case, ALL of the above conditions will happen.

Other sites like Surfline or Wetsand do call for a giant swell too for Thursday.
In my opinion, looking at the modelled maps 7.5 days out, (if those are confirmed!) on Thursday it's definitely going to be pretty freaking big, but it looks to me that Friday (and eventually Saturday) could be even bigger! And we'll probably going to see one of those epic Kona wind days at Lanes...
Too early to really say, but port tack specialists (and photographers) get ready!

Ah, one more thing. Since a couple of months, beachtelegraph.com is doing an excellent job at collecting the links to the most interesting windsurfing articles/news on the net. I want to thank Brian for doing that and for the kind words he often has towards my blog.

Thanks to that site, for example, I learned about Diony's latest long video and about Brawzinho's double sponsor change.

For this link to some huge Britanny waves, instead, I have to thank David from the Hot Sails Maui forum.

Hey, wait a moment.. some of the footage in Diony's video is mine (La Perouse and the gopro mounted on the mast) and he doesn't even mention me at the end?!?

I'll sue him for sure.

need a small independent room in Maui?

I got one available!

PS. Nice post by Shaz with plenty windsurfing pics.

plane bug + new lens

I knew that! That lady sitting next to me on the plane was coughing too much...

After a great first day in Maui in the water with a double surf and sail session, I'm now lying in bed with a cold and a fever. Oh well, could be worse...
Yesterday though, before getting really sick, I managed to sit on the bluff and test the new lens I bought for my Sony.
Check out the results, starting from Graham Ezzy in Maui for the Christmas holidays. Nice shirt/sail color combo.


Super gusty/offshore wind and what seemed to me like mostly a wind swell... at least I didn't miss anything epic (even though the pro always make it look epic).
This is Levi on his new Goya sails.


KP hitting the lip with board, sail and body.


This time, instead, hitting a clean aerial.


Mark Angulo doing his thing.


I like this one because it seems almost black and white with only the pink left as the only color. This guys is at Middles... how's the zoom?


Not a fun moment.


Here's a slide with a few more pics. Check the zoom on # 6 and 7.

And here's the 1.7 magnifying lens I bought (less than 100 bucks).


First quick feedback after one hour of use: it rocks and it's exactly what I needed.
The light was horrible, so don't be fooled by that.
The images are still sharp even at max optical zoom. When I dig in with the digital zoom I can get into skin pores and body parts (stay tuned for the first duck dive shots...).
It added a little weight, but it's still light enough to be carried at all times in my backpack and to be held by hand without the need of a tripod.
In other words, I love it. The Canon is going back as soon as I get out of bed...
Costo customer service, I'm coming!

Oh, a unexpected advantage that I didn't even think of: at full optical zoom, even the movies are now close enough. Here's a short clip of Mark Angulo (at Middles).
But I enjoy taking photos much better though, so don't get used to them...


As the weather map clearly shows, the strong offshore (can I add ugly?) wind will continue. That low on the left, instead, will send a big WNW swell around Tuesday. How big it will be in Maui, that'll depend on the amount of blockage the other islands will provide... always a very difficult thing to forecast.
Will I be well by then?


Checking the long term modelled maps, it seems that more big waves (this time from a more North and close source and with no much trade wind) will hit starting towards the end of next week into 10 days from now. God, I hope I'll be well by then!!!

PS. As a reader pointed out in a comment on last post, it seems that somebody in Italy read my comment about the lack of smiles (or more likely just shared my opinion and found a smart way of pumping up the business). This shop owner in Grosseto is now giving 10% discount to the clients who enter his shop with a smile...