Saturday 2 17 18 morning call

A SUP foiling and two longboard sessions for me yesterday for a total of 6 hours in the water. Days like yesterday are a rarity in Maui and need to be taken advantage of. What made it special was the total lack of wind until noon. My first longboard session was a 10 and that was thanks to a Mentawais kind of glassiness in the middle of the morning, due to the cloud cover.

At sunset I took these photos of Marlon Lewis on his tiny foilboard to illustrate something that I tell my foiling students: when you foil, your body is a lot quieter than when you surf. In this first shot, he's completely centered over the board and that's how it needs to be when you're going straight.


In this other one, he's initiating a cutback and a little twist of his shoulder is all he needed to achieve it. Not having a board touching the water, makes the foil extremely sensitive to the rail pressure. In other words, it takes a minimal amount of rail pressure to make it turn. Much more subtle than a regular surfboard.


Just like any other discipline, the more I teach foiling, the more I learn how to teach it. Here's the sentence with which I now start my foil lessons:
"I will consider successful your first three waves if you manage to keep the board down and not if you manage to make it foil!". The first thing you need to learn in fact, is to put the extra (compared to surfing) weight on the front foot to control the foil. If you don't do that and put the weight on the back foot as you're used to when you catch a wave and drop in it when surfing, the foil will shoot up and you're gonna fall. Only after a few successful first waves in which the students manages to keep it down I will then let him/her try to make it come up by releasing some of the front foot pressure. It works.

4am significant buoy readings
South shore
No indication of southerly energy at the buoys, the Surfline forecast calls for nothing.

North shore
NW101
2.4ft @ 12s from 340° (NNW)

Waimea
1.8ft @ 15s from 328° (NW)

1.8ft @ 11s from 324° (NW)

1.8ft @ 13s from 321° (NW)

Pauwela

5.8ft @ 8s from 77° (ENE)

1.8ft @ 11s from 18° (NNE)

1.4ft @ 15s from 345° (NNW)

1.2ft @ 12s from 347° (NNW)

Small mixed period northerly energy at Pauwela with the addition of 6f 8s from the east will provide plenty fun size waves on the north shore again.

Wind map at 8am shows lovely light offshores on the north shore. That will provide excellent conditions once again.


Wind map at noon shows light sideon wind instead.


North Pacific shows three fetches:
- a WNW distant one
- a NNE close by one
- a easterly close by one which has been in place for quite a few days now and is responsible for a short period easterly swell that started a couple of days ago and will last for at least a couple of weeks. That means that that fetch is predicted to stay in place for that long. Unfortunately, starting Thursday the head of it will include the islands, so we're going to get the wind too. Enjoy until it lasts.


South Pacific doesn't offer anything of relevance.


Morning sky.