Saturday, March 04, 2017

Saturday 3 4 17 morning call

Yesterday I spent 5 hours in the water in a spot that was a 9. It was so good that my surf guide customer wanted to do 2 back to back sessions (she got some stamina!), plus I had to add some surfing on my own. Obviosuly, she wants to go again today...

Thanks to blog reader Ben for posting a comment with a link to these dramatic pictures of a water sprout that happened in Kihei 2 days ago.


This is a couple of Hi-Tech rental customers on whose car I just loaded a couple of stand up boards. They enjoyed my joke: "now you got a real Padillac there!"


5am significant buoy readings
South shore
Lanai
1.8ft @ 6s from 183° (S)
1.2ft @ 12s from 191° (SSW)
1.2ft @ 8s from 176° (S)
0.9ft @ 9s from 233° (WSW)

The Kona's windswell is going down, but that 1.2f 12s will provide something. There were some small sets yesterday together with the weaker windswell waves. Check the webcams, as usual.

North shore
NW101
5.9ft @ 8s from 193° (SSW)
4.9ft @ 7s from 194° (SSW)
4.5ft @ 10s from 76° (ENE)
2.3ft @ 15s from 280° (W)

NW001
6.2ft @ 9s from 89° (E)
5.8ft @ 7s from 185° (S)
2.1ft @ 13s from 253° (WSW)
 
Waimea
1.6ft @ 14s from 325° (NW)

Pauwela
4.7ft @ 9s from 81° (E)
1.2ft @ 15s from 326° (NW)
 
Interesting but perplexing readings at the NW buoys. The graph below shows NW001 on the left and Pauwela on the right.  When I checked the two NW buoys yesterday afternoon, they were both reading very west mid period energy. So west that I told the customer in front of me at the shop that none of that will ever reach Maui's north shore.
 
This morning the situation is even less clear and that graph is unreadable. I underlined all the mid period readings and it's impossible to connect the dots together. And with a direction of 253, I still think that what I told my customer is correct. But then of course it's possible that those buoys are too exposed to all kind of different oscillations and don't report the direction correctly.

 As a matter of fact, both Waimea and Pauwela do report small mid period readings. The light blue line in Pauwela's graph is associated with that, so Hookipa should have some small lines here and there to keep it from going completely flat, but nothing substantial. The normal NW swells surfing operations will resume tomorrow over there.

In the meantime, the windswell is still up, now coming from 81 degrees (so most likely missing Hookipa). That peak at noon yesterday (O.H.) provided plenty overhead sets to the east facing shores. Today it should be smaller both because the size went down and the direction went more east. Look at the maps I posted yesterday and you'll see that 81 is borderline already.
 
 
 
NAM3km map at 2pm shows another windless day.
 
Satellite photo shows another gorgeous sunny day, even though that tail of a front will get to us at one point later in the week.
 
Around Wednesday, looks like from this beautiful Windguru table below. Liver cleanse will have to wait again. Now that I got all that I need, I just want to wait for a bad forecast to do it (i.e. strong wind, in my case).


Current wind map shows:
1) distant moderate NW fetch
2) much closer and stronger NW fetch
3) windswell fetch
The L indicates the position of a low that will be kinda stationary for the next few days. that's why there will be such little wind. For most of the time, we should be in a small area of no wind, but surrounded by winds of all kind of direction, so things can go bad really easily. We'll see what will happen day by day.

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