Wednesday, January 27, 2016

1 27 16 morning call

Yesterday was yet another beautiful day of big waves and light wind on the north shore of Maui.

If you could handle the size, Hookipa offered some intense emotions. Photo by Jimmie Hepp.


The outer reefs were going off too. This is Chris Pagdilao in a photo by Tomoko Okazaki.



I don't like big waves (I get injured enough with the small ones), so I picked a more manageable head high spot for the morning session. SUP session at sunset was even better.


Read Pat Caldwell if you want to know the complex development of the fetches contributing to today's swell. At the same time (maybe in another window), grab this blog and scroll down to check the wind map of days he's talking about. That would be a analytical approach.
A more empirical approach would be to just check the buoys and act consequently. I like both.

NW buoy finally back to showing some long period readings. I put an arrow on a reading that seems to be 7f 20s at midnight. Direction has been around 300 and that should take a little less time compared to the usual 320ish, so I'm gonna guess that the same energy should get to Maui by noon. That seems way too fast, but we'll see if the formulas are right.

In the meantime, at 5am Pauwela reads
7.3ft @ 13s from 325° (NW)
2.0ft @ 9s from 334° (NNW)
0.7ft @ 25s from 326° (NW)
so I definitely recommend to focus on the first reading ("leftover" of yesterday's swell) to choose the spot for the first session in the early morning. From mid morning on, keep a close eye on the buoys if you don't want to get caught into bigger surf than you expected.
Definitely a Jaws day in the afternoon and so it will be tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, the peak is during the night.

Other 5am readings worth mentioning:
Hanalei 4.1ft @ 22s from 321° (NW) (holy crap, those long periods really travel fast!)
Barbers 0.7ft @ 25s from 296° (WNW)

BTW, together with a few webcams, the surfline buoy page (link n.11) is one of the staples of my smart phone internet favorites. It's very light, easy to read and it loads even when the signal is pretty weak and it tells what is in the water (or what was an hour before). 
 
 
Wind map shows an extremely wide but not too intense fetch that occupies the whole Pacific Ocean NW of us. The more intense part is the one now aiming at the mainland's west coast and that in the past few days generated today's big swell. New low pressure is going to form out of the air coming from mainland Asia off the north of Japan. Related swell is forecasted for Monday at 10f 15s.


MC2km map not updated yet, but I see a lovely SE light flow. Happy spot hunting everybody!

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