surf-matic

Small waves and a big 90.3% full moon adorn Maui’s North Shore at this very moment of writing. But like all things, both will pass. The Moon will reach its peak fullness on Saturday the 10th and the surf will pickup dramatically on Thursday and Friday.

Here are two forecasts. The first is from windguru and the second from magic seaweed. Personally I default to the magic seaweed forecast, but it’s always good to check more than one. Either way, Thursday and Friday should be bangers.

Windguru's predictions lie above.

And here are Magic Seaweed's calculated prophecies.

While filming background footage on the top of Haleakala with Brendan from umi, I met a kind Frenchman named Hugo who traveled to Maui from LA to film time lapses. He recently sent me one of his works (of city lights). Check it out (oh, and the accompanying song is sick):

Connect on facebook and twitter.

Testing a new sail on a taka.

Maui now is racing forward into the winter. We’ve had big swells already, and more are forecasted for the end of this week. Fingers crossed for wind.

With the close of November came an end to a month of filming with umi. That time was wonderful with days centered on sailing and getting footage. i.e., going to the beach at 11am, sailing till dark, and going through footage basically every other waking minute. Lots of fun with equal parts work.

umi has a lot in the works at the moment. One example is the Bonaire editing competition: http://www.umipictures.com/promotions/bonaire11/. The winner wins a trip for 2 to Bonaire, so if you’ve got any interest in editing, check it out.

As the winter wears on, the winds get less consistent here on the rock. But at the moment, the conditions are still good enough to test sails. And boy are there sails to test! My dad and Kevin Pritchard have been doing a ton of testing while I’ve been filming and now I need put my time in. With new designs every week, there’s a lot of work to do. But it seems to be paying off; I really loved the prototype I tried on Saturday.

Some site maintenance: now there is a “films” section that features some of my collaborations with umi. Also, the “Pro Tips” heading was remove but the tips can still be found in the archives. If anyone has a specific request for Pro Tips (or anything else), let me know via the comments.

I found this photo below from a magazine scan of Apple products available in the 80s. Enjoy:

I wonder if they tested this sail much? Lots of luff curve and 2 battens? Hmmm...

No wind today, so instead here are some good wipeout shots that Sofie Louca took over the last month:

Backside to over the falls!

Still in the straps! This one hurt a lot-- head slammed into the boom and a tooth chipped (only a little).

Upside down!

Maui is a bit windless at the moment. Tuesday and Wednesday then are rest days and errand days. So, nothing new to report. The forecast might be alright for the latter part of the week. Fingers crossed!

Letting the tail slide down.

The swell is dropping here on Maui but don’t fear as there are more waves on the horizon! Monday was fun but kind of frustrating. I was excited to push myself hard, but I ended up being too amped and falling a lot. I had some big wipeouts. On one of them, I fell over the falls and my forearm got stuck in the back of the boom. The sail twisted in the whitewater as I tried to hold onto the equipment with my other hand but it kept bending my other arm to the point where I thought that my arm would break. At the last instant, I was able to pull my arm from its locked position. My second session was a bit better, luckily.

Tail slash!

And here is a song that I’ve been playing a lot lately from a mixed CD that a close friend made for me. I love everything about it:

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.

I’m destroyed from a long long long day on the water windsurfing. I left my house at 8am and got back at sunset. A Maui Monday will be up in 12ish hours. For now, check my trip to Japan from January:

Throwing some spray mid taka.

Today was fun at Hookipa– good waves and lots of juicy lips to hit. The session however, ended prematurely when some big, black, rain storms came through and shut down the wind. The thunder cleared and the wind came back, but there were too many surfers at Hookipa, so I sailed down to Lanes. I had some fun waves, sharing with nobody but Matt Meola. However, on a big backside 360, I went over the falls and broke the line on my boom head. It took me ages to get out of the circular cycle of breaking waves and finally swim into the inside and crawl over the reef at Lanes. Oh well…

Tomorrow is looking good. Stay tuned.

Riding a wave at Lanes.