Epic (part one)

These are the photos of Tuesday March 2nd. Thanks to Alex Buiton (good luck with the recovery of that broken foot) for taking them.

The reason this one is the first one is not because it's the best, but because it's me... da hell, being the blog author got to give me some privileges!
I'm not hitting the lip, I'm not doing an aerial, but I'm doing a turn right under the lip in a very steep section of a decent size wave and I'm pretty happy with it.


Best photo, instead, is the usual Levi.
He was absolutely on fire. I remember in particular this one wave (not the one in the photo). I had just kicked out off my wave, so I was downwind and on the inside and I had the best possible point of view.
The speed at which he did his turns was something that my brain refused to believe. It looked like a video game, or a sped up clip. Bum-bum, bum-bum, up-down, up-down.
That was the best windsurfing I've seen live. I can't even imagine what it must be to be sailing with the good guys at Ponta Preta...
Anyway, just by watching him on that wave, I learned that I have to crank that back hand more in the bottom turn and be closer to wave face. Thanks for the lesson brah.


And now have a look at these next two, 'cause I have a story...
Unfortunately, the first one is pretty dark (not blaming Alex, he did a good job to be the first time using my shitty little camera), but it definitely shows the size of the wave. And you know what? That wave looked just like that even from my point of view: big, black and mean. It completely obscured the sunlight and put me in some dark scary shade. The wind had suddenly dropped to zero and I had no way to escape when the wall of water heavily collapsed on me.

No big deal, we've all had mast high wipeouts many times... it can actually be kind of fun if you manage to relax underwater.
This time though, a little problem occurred. I was dropping my gear (hands off the boom and feet off the straps) while being hit by the water, when I felt the harness accidentally hooking in the harness lines... good luck at relaxing and enjoying like that! Absolute terror is what I felt instead.

The force and pressure of the water was so hard that I had no control whatsoever over my limbs: couldn't put my hands back on the boom, couldn't even put them on my head to protect it! I was getting pounded as hard as ever because not only the water was making me do the usual washing machine cycle, but also I was violently pulled in all directions by my gear that I was still connected to.
I was expecting the board to hit me at any time, but luckily that didn't happen... just a really big scare. You guys (and myself) can laugh about it now, but at the moment it was frightening.


See my sail? I'm probably still under it and hooked in... and that's just the end of the wipeout.


Allright, chronological order from now on.
Moi.


Levi.


Levi.


Glenn.


Nico.


Palmi.


Moi.


Moi.


Glenn.


Moi.


Levi.


Levi.


Moi.


Moi.


Blurred, but it shows moi on another another big one. Couldn't do the section because I wanted to be where the other sailor was... and you call them friends!!! At least I didn't get worked by that one.


Oh, hi Glenn!


Moi.


Moi.


As you saw it was just five of us, all friends. That made the session extra special. I feel like mentioning that Dave saw Nick hitting the water at around 7.30am and killing it too.
In the meantime, Alex B. put online the photos he took with his camera on Monday. Thanks for putting that skirt between two shots of moi.

Yesterday (Wednesday) it was only me and Glenn. It looked like shit from the beach: small and super light, but once we got out we found head high peelers and plenty super offshore wind. It ended up being a really fun session, since after two bigger days we felt like we could push it a bit more. Towards the end Chris replaced Glenn (whose arms were falling off) and it was another great day of wave sailing.
I need to rest today.
Too bad I probably won't.

Stay tuned for the video.

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For example, here's the stats of the last week, pretty much well over 1,000 unique visitors every day. Thanks to all the readers for the interest in this blog.


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close to epic (part two)

Well, the day after (Tuesday) the wind was a little lighter and the swell turned more north, so guess how was it?...

Before we get to that, here are the GoPro photos of Monday, starting from a nice sequence of my buddy Dave.
How freaking perfect is that wave?





My turn to ride one of those beauties. I'm on a 4.0.




Glenn loves when he can backloop on the first wave of his session.


The following two photos were takes two seconds apart... I swear!



Beautiful!


The late afternoon session was just as good.


A look upwind.


I have video clips too, but those take more time. I guess I'll put them together with the ones of Tuesday. But first, I'll post the photos from Tuesday. Come back later for those.
Well, I guess that having a hard time catching up with documenting all the great ocean activities one does is a great problem to have... :))))

Let me just leave you with the weather map of this morning Wednesday March 3rd.


That strong high will keep the trades blowing pretty fresh. What's alarming in the map is that there is not a single little fetch generating a ground swell for Hawaii.
Should I be depressed about it? No, because there will be plenty ENE windswell. Plus, in 24 hours that low to the left will move west and have a fetch oriented towards us. That will result in a NW swell for Sunday and Monday.
After that though, I only see trade winds blowing very strong for... ever!
No wait! Small south swell in a week or so... could be worse!!!

close to epic (part one)

A little less wind and a little more north in the swell and Monday would have been totally epic (for my preferences). But sure enough it was a hell lot of fun.

This is Nick Warmuth in my favorite photo. All the other ones are in strict chronological order.


Sexy wetsuits sometimes are not warm enough. Nadia was freezing at the end of her session.


Kick out Nico style.


Glenn got the bomb of the day.


Glenn rides his wave (the shoulder of the bomb wasn't that bomby), while Keith and Lalo play together out the back.


Lalo (on top) and Keith keep figure eighting.


Francisco Porcella showed off a thruster by his new board sponsor: 99 custom boards.


Lalo.


Nick.


Nick.


Francisco.


That's how Levi made it back in (the wind on the inside was almost none).


Jaaaason Prior!


Jake 'the snake' Miller should change his nickname to Jake 'the grasshopper' Miller. It doesn't rhyme, but it's more appropriate. Today it's his birthday, happy sailing to him!


Jason.


I like this shot, because it's a bit surreal. The grays of Nick's sail blend with the lack of a background and the fact that he just kicked out makes it look like he's sailing on a weird direction... like if he was photoshopped there. But he wasn't.


Nico.


Nico.


Nico.


Nick.


Levi.


Keith.


Jake.


Levi.


Levi. Does that look like Cabo Verde, or what?


I also took a bunch of photos/videos from my head camera. No time to post them today: come back soon.
By the way, I don't know if you noticed, but blogger has decided to limit the number of posts shown in the main page in order to reduce the loading time. If you missed a post, there's always the "older posts" option and the archives, but the best way to make sure you won't miss anything is to come back and check often...

PS. It's definitely still winter. My "March is not winter anymore" is a psychological thing... it's just the awareness that soon it's not going to be winter anymore... focus on the present buddy, focus on the present!

more on the Tsunami (or lack of thereof)

Alex sent these great photos (you may want to click on them to see better) that I'm happy to publish and comment.

Let's start with this one. It's kite beach on what we can call the exhale of the tsunami. It's equivalent to a plus 2 feet high tide, I'd say.


A few minutes later, here's the same beach exposing some rocks and also a reef (to the left of the crane) infamously known like boneyard. That is equivalent to a low tide of probably minus 1.5 feet.


So, in the end, the effect of the tsunami waves was pretty much equivalent to what a spring tide in June does (about 3 feet range in Hawaii). The difference was the time interval, a few minutes instead of a few hours. That caused weird things.
For example, on the TV they were showing the Hilo bay where during the inhale the water was rushing out so fast that it looked like a stream. It made you think "there we go, after that, the wave will hit"... but instead the water came back in pretty much at the same speed without looking like a wave at all.

The Kahului harbor in Maui has a very narrow entrance. All that water sucking out created a turbolence that Alex called plume (thanks, didn't know that word).
It churned like this (with choppy boiling water at its center) all the way to sandpiles area for at least 1 hr. as the next two plumes did the same while lasting about 30 to 45min.

I feel like adding that that plume would not have formed if a man built basin like the harbor wasn't there.


Thanks Alex, that was very interesting.

Today it's March 1st. Winter in Maui for me is November, December, January and February. So today I should be sad, because what has been the best winter of the last 9 years (that's how long I've been year) is gone. But I'm not (ok, maybe just a little...). Because:
1) IT WAS the best winter of the last 9 years and I had MANY epic surfing and wavesailing sessions
2) spring in Maui is still an awesome season (unlike summer... that's when the need of going somewhere else kicks in!)
3) today has the potential to be a great wavesailing day...

We'll see!