surf-matic

We had some plus sized waves at Hookipa over the weekend.

Last week was a bit slow but it ended with quite an explosion of sailing on Sunday. The large North swell and strong northerly winds prompted waking up at 7am to head over to a not-so-secret secret spot. We got to this spot at 9:30am and three people were already on the water with a few more rigged up and ready to go. The waves were head high and fun, but nothing special.

After a three hour session, I packed up and drove like crazy to get to the North Shore to catch some of the massive swell at Hookipa. When we pulled up to Hookipa, it was windy as hell and completely closing out. Every wave seemed well over head and the period was so small that there was a constant boiling of white water throughout the break. With nobody out, I had no idea how the conditions actually were.

So, I rigged a 4.7 and stepped out into the unknown. With the strong wind, getting out past the waves wasn’t so hard. And I tried to catch the big ones so as not to be stuck inside on the small stuff. Because the wind was a kind of onshore, the lips weren’t pitching, so even though they had a ton of power, wave airs were impossible (and suicidal). I tried to do a backdoor air on one of the waves and bailed over the fails in fear because it didn’t launch me far enough out in front. As the day wore on, I worked up my courage to hit one of these massive lips. And then another. Working on getting some good carves on the massive faces, I sailed in these moving mountains of water.

I came in from my session, too overpowered to sail more. Shortly after I came in, the wind seemed to have dropped and I decided to go back out to show my dad some big off-the-lips. Unfortunately, the wind dropped too much. I spent the next hour trying to get out and subsequently getting pounded by the massive swells. Finally, just after the sunset, I gave up trying to make it back to Hookipa and I swam into Lanes.

Overall, I think I had something like 6 or 7 hours of windsurfing divided into 3 sessions at 2 different spots. It seems the trend to have multisport days. But I can say that I’m proud to have devoted that whole day to windsurfing, the sport I love so much.

Here are some photos courtesy of Jeff from www.MauiWindsurfing.net.

Pushloop on a massive Hookipa Sunday.

Hitting the lip on one of them.