Epic, short and very rare: the final sequence

Back to Nick Warmuth on that Wednesday august 12.

I really love the background in these photos (click on at least one to appreciate it). And I must not be the only one, since Windsurfing magazine is evaluating to buy the fourth one (which I'm not publishing here). I really hope they do buy it, I can't wait to see it there.
Talking about windsurfing magazines, here's a brand new online and free one.







In the meantime, the wind started blowing again and Hookipa yesterday was a hell lot of fun. Perfect 4.7 wind and head high walls to hit right in front of the rocks.
I had a surf session at 6.30am on an east facing beach (horrible, the waves were too big and disorganized), then I had a first two hours windsurf session at noon and it was just five of us for an hour or so before everyone else arrived and then again another sailing session at 5pm till like 6.15 with light wind and glassy waves.

I can certainly say that I made the most of a day off... and I slept like a baby at night!
The windswell is steady at 6 feet 9 seconds and it should stay like that for a few more days, maybe even a foot bigger on Friday.
So shall the fun continue!

PS. This is a really, really good article about how humans fucked up the world (there's even an italian translation).

Epic, short and very rare: another sequence

Second sequence of the Nick Warmuth show at Waiehu.

It's almost sure by now that Guillermo will NOT create the same conditions, since its remnants will pass too far north and will be too weak to pull air from the south. I'm telling you, these conditions could not happen again for a loooong time.
Best sequence still to come, stay tuned.








Uff, windsurfing only posts are a bit boring. I'm sure Nick won't mind the inclusion of Dayana Mendoza in this post.
Mamma mia...

Epic, short and very rare: an aerial sequence.

This sequence shows how fun the conditions were on that Wednesday morning and how good of a sailor Nick Warmuth is.
There's another sequence of photos in which Nick is more upwind on a bigger wave and the background is made of the breathtakingly beautiful green fields of Haleakala, but that'll be the last one I publish...
In the meantime, enjoy Nick's great aerial.

Epic, short and very rare: the preface.

Something very special happened on the morning of yesterday, Wednesday August 12th on the island of Maui.


The ex hurricane Felicia had been downgraded to tropical depression, but it still had the strength to send a 9 feet, 9 seconds east swell.

Here's the surfline Mokapu point buoy readings.


East swells of that size and period are not that unusual in Maui. It happens every time the trades blow over 30 knots for a few days, and are accompanied by a long fetch upstream. Let's say four times a year.

That same morning, the center of the depression moved in a position that allowed a strong flow from the south to blow across the valley between the Haleakala and the West Maui Mountain for a few hours.
Here's the iWindsurf.com Kanaha graph.


Strong south winds are not that unusual in Maui. It happens every time a low pressure coming from the NW gets close enough to Hawaii to pull air out of the south (locally called Kona wind). Let's say four times a year.
Kona winds are usually associated with a big NW swell (the one generated by the same storm). The crazy pictures of Lanes are immediately all over the internet every time it happens.

Now, even from just a strict mathematical view point, the probability that both the above described conditions would happen at the same time is already pretty low.
But from the metereological point of view, that is actually impossible.

The trades, in fact, blow strong if and when there's a strong and wide high pressure north of Hawaii. That clearly excludes the possibility of a Kona wind generating low getting close enough to the islands.
It's either one (the east swell) or the other (the Kona wind).

Unless...

Unless there's an hurricane that travels from east to west between 15 and 20 degrees of latitude, helping the trade winds to pump up the windswell and at the very last moment veers NW a bit and give the islands a few hours of south winds.

Hurricanes are extremely rare in Hawaii (they usually hang out around 10 degrees more south) and in eight years that I've been here I've never seen anything like this happen.

Between 8.30 and 10 am on Wednesday morning, two windsurfers that live on the Waiehu side scored some epic, short and very rare conditions.
The first to hit the water was a swiss sailor call Ian. The second one was Nick Warmuth and my friend Alex took a bunch of photos of him.

With the next post I'll start publishing them. Stay tuned, they are really, really good. The one on the top is just a naughty teaser...