Yet another absolutely gorgeous day in Maui.

Thanks to the amazing HD GoPro camera, here you get a little of the magic surf session I had in the morning up the coast. Check the sky.


In 2 and a half hours, I rode many beautiful walls of water like this.


Two seconds later.


Framed by water. Sorry again about that snot, this time on my ear.
I look like Ben Stiller in "There's something about Mary"...


Is there a barrel to be had?...


...getting clipped by the lip. You guys think I could have squeezed in there?


Look at those glassy waves!


The intense paddling at the very last moment before catching a wave increases my face wrinkles by 500% and makes me look 100 years old.


Few seconds later, and I'm way more relaxed.


Lil 'toes up' top turn.


And another glassy wall.


Cross-stepping my way to the nose... light like a butterfly, graceful like a ballet dancer! A gay one, I'd say...


I wanted to do 'toes on the camera', but I thought that the result would have been a bit dark... so I put my foot to the side of it.


At one point I was sitting next to Francisco Porcella and we agreed that on the next wave I would have dropped in on him so that he would ride the wave behind me and be in the video clip.
"Allright, cool!"
Little we knew that the next wave was going to be the best of the day.

As soon as we saw it coming, he started to paddle super deep towards the double overhead peak. Right, but he was on a shortboard and he's just ever so slightly better than me... so I stayed where I was and dropped in on the shoulder.
Even though it was previously agreed, it was as bad as a drop-in can be: I completely ruined his wave.
"Shit! Let's not do this anymore, ok?", he said later understandably bummed.
"Yeah, it didn't quite work, did it... but hey, maybe I got a killer shot that will end up on the cover of Surfer magazine!", I tried to cheer him up.
Here's the snapshot of the only frame he was in...

Thanks Francisco, that was a great wave!!! :))))


After my awesome session, I took a few pics at Hookipa.

There's no caption for something like this.


This kid was ripping.


Just like this other one.


Being a famous windsurfer didn't help you: you've been DDS (DuckDiveShot)!


Being the girlfriend of a famous windsurfer didn't help you: you've been DDS!


Ian Walsh is in town.


Here he is demolishing a lip, while the lifeguards jet-ski is passing by, telling everyone to leave the water.


Why? Because they spotted a shark.


Now, thank god I was already done with my session, otherwise I would have been soooo pissed to be forced to leave the water with those beautiful waves!
Can someone tell me what is the difference between seeing a shark or not? They're out there no matter if you see them or not!
It's the same thing like saying:"you can't enter the highway, someone spotted a car".
Sharks and cars are exactly the same thing. They're out there when you're in the water or on the highway and they usually mind their business. Occasionally, very occasionally, they hit you. How occasionally? Good question.

Here's what I used to tell my windsurfing students that asked me questions about the sharks in the ocean.
"You scared by sharks? You know how many people are killed by sharks worldwide every year in average? Four. You know how many people are killed by car accidents worldwide every year? 1.3 millions. You're waaaaay more in danger when you enter your car than when you enter the ocean."
Guess what. It never really worked. The students were probably even more scared to be reminded that actually sharks occasionally do kill people than relieved to learn that such a thing has an extremely low probability to happen. What can I say, not everyone's left brain is stronger than the right...

Back to the water evacuation. It would make a lot more sense if the lifeguards would only warn the ocean users if they spot a shark. Inform them and let them the freedom to risk if they feel like. As long as they put the sign out and blow the siren a few times, the county can't be sued, can it? Of course it can, we're in America. Where if a surfer chooses to stay out after a warning and then he gets bitten, he wold probably sue the lifeguards because they only warned him instead of forcing him out of the water and very likely win the lawsuit!
This is the country were an old lady sued McDonalds (and won!!!!) because she burned herself with the coffee, since it was... hot!
Anyway, let's move on.

Must have been a shark.


Allright, enough photos. Let me leave you with that amazing sky again.


No wait!
I can't stand the blogs that try to sell you stuff all the times, but this is only occasional, like a shark attack. I got no more room for boards and need to get rid of some.
The AHD Sea Lion is a unique SUP sailing board. Extremely fun in small mushy surf. Ideal for summer time.


I'm also selling a 2009 Quatro twin fin 81l. And I believe Glenn still has an AHD Seal to sell. My email is on the right.

The NW buoy went up to 15 feet, 17 seconds from 325. Tomorrow is going to be big... outer reef kind of big. 10pm, I hope I'll sleep good, because I got waves to catch tomorrow... 'night.

A bit al dente...

That's how Swedish sailor Ola Helenius defined the conditions at Hookipa yesterday. He also added that he received a nice treat by that set... I bet!


Even Robby got mashed (thanks Douglas).


What another magnificent day in paradise!

Yet another major NW swell hit the hawaiian islands. After a morning surf session at Kanaha, I went to Hookipa to take a few pics. I really like this one.


This is my buddy Griffin waiting for a better moment to paddle through the channel. I wonder what he's thinking...


And these are a few surfers at Middles, starting from Kuau resident Ian Walsh.




Then the wind picked up a notch and a few sailors ventured out.
Mark Angulo had some really good waves, but my respect goes to all who went out.


These are the rest of the photos. The other two sailors are Ferdinando (Maui Sails) and Bernd (little Naish).








After that more sailors went out, but I decided to go get some action myself. The wind at Kanaha was veeery light, to the point that only a few down the line rides were allowed. But the waves were just gorgeous.
I caught some of the best lefts ever, rode them on the back side of the sail goofy stance and had a blast at it.
Allright, it's now 7am monday morning, time to go catch more of those lefts, this time laying down on my surfboard.

PS. Plenty big swells on the horizon this week. Dave Troup is planning of doing a live webcast from Jaws.
Check the Surfline 5 days forecast... even a south swell! This winter is just ridiculously good...

tons of links

Right after I posted that last post yesterday morning, Maui offered me an awesome day, like if she wanted to show me that she still loves me...

I started off with a surf session. Five of us, all friends. Head high waves, not perfect, but sure fun. Then I worked for four hours at a wage that would make most employed people in the western world laugh, but is still a lot more than the wage of half of the world working population (which, in case you don't know, is 2 bucks a day!!!), and then I wave sailed up the coast and had an absolute blast.

Head to logo, sometimes mast high. 10 seconds period, not the cleanest, but very frequent and plenty to choose from. Crowd factor non existent. I was riding the with image of Boujmaa ripping Morocco in my mind. Not sure I could emulate him, but it sure felt good to try to. I had a couple of waves that made me scream of joy, all by myself. If you've ever done that, you know how special that feels.
What can I say. I feel like the luckiest/happiest man on Earth. That's good feeling.

Links. God, where should I begin? Here, absolutely random:

Here's a photo of Pascal taken by blog reader David Biddle last month. He sent it to me asking me to identify the sailors (it's me on the background). I did and contacted water photographer Francky Berthout to ask him if he had that photo of Pascal. Here's the water shot.
That is an interesting comparison and shows how freaking cool water shots are.

Back to the incredible win of Kai Lenny at Sunset beach in the SUP contest. Here's a drop and here's the video with the highlights of the last day. Big congratulations to the 17 yo.


Talking about surf contests, lately there has been one at Mavericks with some really big waves. These are some awesome shots (thanks Rick).
And this is a little clip that shows how a rogue wave created chaos between the spectators (thanks Alex).

And now a bit of conscience awareness raising.
Chef Jamie Oliver is on a mission to change the fucked up food system. He was awarded a TED price. Here's his touching speech (thanks Sharon).

While I was on the TED site, I ran into this (short) one of Doctor Dean Ornish on how today's food is killing us.
Here's a longer one on healing. I haven't even seen this one yet, but I trust him...

Yet another good one by Mark Bittman about what's wrong with what we eat.

This is the first part of a clip about the Pacific Gyre on this awesome site called vbs.tv (thanks Keith). I started looking for part two and three, but then I ran into these other shocking clips about how toxic the land around my home town Naples have become. Part one and two.

Not sure what Camorra is? Here's a guy who knows about it and in order to fight it is now in constant life danger. Haven't seen this one either, but I just feel like thanking him for what he's doing. I actually feel like thanking all the people that are trying to fight all the shit that there is in the world. I know, it's a bit of a generic thank...

"People, the power is in our hands". That's just a line from a reggae song I just heard... wish it was true. It probably is, the problem is the lack of awareness.
Internet, thanks to sites like the ones I linked, can help change things. Sure they won't talk about stuff like this on TV during the Olympics...

So, even if those clips are long, take some of the time you would spend watching usuless TV shows and invest it in learning how we are fucking up the Earth without even knowing it... thanks for reading.

Morocco and Cabo Verde

Maui just had a little spell of (relatively speaking) shitty onshore conditions (AKA 'high work advisory') and, even though if you knew where to go you could always squeeze a surf or windsurf session, I don't have much to report about the local action.
I do have a bunch of links though. Between beachtelegraph.com, emails from the readers and Fecebook, I virtually have no chances to miss a good video/photo... cool!

My favorite is - by far - this video of Boujmaa Guillol, scoring as good as they get (to my preference) conditions all alone (well, with a few surfers) in Morocco. Shockingly good, it reminds me of that Cabo Verde 2007 contest, just a little less hollow hence maybe a little "easier".

Wonderful. And great sailing by Boujmaa. Enjoy.


Talking about Cabo Verde, Kai K and Josh Angulo have been scoring too.

Cabo Verde February 2010 from Anguloboards.com on Vimeo.

I have plenty more links but no time (got to go surf!), so make sure to come back because I will add them later.

a couple of Mimosa's

Considering that my time is not infinite, would you rather have less photos with caption or more photos without caption? This post is an example of the latter.

I do feel like writing a bit of introduction, though.

This amazing Maui winter just blessed us with two other gorgeous days.
Sunday I surfed and sailed (slog and surf) Kanaha. Three sessions for a total of more than four hours in the water.
I went home knackered and someone prepared me a Mimosa: how lovely!


I drank a couple of those (plus a couple of glasses of wine at dinner), and alcohol is not exactly the best when you need to re-hydrate. As a consequence, I didn't rest well and today I was pretty weak.


But Hookipa was too good to pass. My favorite conditions: pure slog and surf and some really clean waves. I only lasted one hour, but it was definitely worth it.
After that, you guessed it, I took photos. A lot of them. Here's a guideline of what you're going to find:
- a bunch of Robby Swift, who sailed the best
- a bunch of bottom turns of Francisco Goya
- a bunch of mutant attempts of Mark Angulo (he stuck two on the back and one on the front, at least when I was watching)
- a surfer dude that does superman
- a bunch of other sailors.

Enjoy.


































Tomorrow, onshore wind in the afternoon. I better go to sleep and try to dawn patrol, before it becomes crap... so to speak.