Slogging to over powered - it's all good cause we got waves

This past weekend the wind was light and on-shore. This was caused by an abnormal gale low NE of Maui. But this unwanted guest was given a firm boot as our friendly sub tropical high has taken over the preferred location NE of us. Actually it might have been a bit to firm. Yeah, now we have a bit too much wind - more on that in a sec. Anyway you can see the exciting sequence of weather events below.

• Friday
• Sunday
• Wednesday

So the wind went from total 5.3 slogging on Saturday, to somewhat slogish on Sunday, to nicely powered 4.7 on Monday, and on to OMG-WTF 4.2 conditions the past two days. Yes, here in Maui lots of wind isn't necessarily a good thing - unlike the Gorge where we (I) pray for 4.0 (or 3.7) conditions. Which we get quite often during Gorge summers BTW.

So here's a look at how the wind progressed over the last few days.

• Saturday
• Sunday
• Monday
• Tuesday

I was on a 5.3 totally slogging from 2-4. Wind avg. 16,14-20 @3pm = slog!

5.3 mostly slogging 1-2 then the wind picked up slightly and was planing. Wind 19,16-23 @3pm = good!

4.7 fully powered 1-4. Wind 25,20-28 @3pm = 4.7 right on

4.2 fully powered 1-3, then overpowered. Wind 33,25-38 = 4.2 too much!

And we had some nice waves on Tuesday from an "edge pass" swell. If you look at the Friday map above you can see a storm that's far away north of the Aleutians that generated this. An edge pass means the swell was not aimed directly at us so we're just getting some angular spreading. Not the real deal. Initially they thought this might generate 8-12 ft waves, and there might have been a few of those, but for the most part it was smaller. Such is life with an edge pass swell. Plus we had those nuking winds to contend which sometimes made it hard to even see the waves through all the spray and chop. Yeah, yeah, we have big problems here on Maui :).

However on Thursday we're supposed to get a much cleaner swell. You can see the system on Sunday that generated this. The storm is closer, bigger and there's a much longer fetch, with some of those lines pointed more or less at HI. So we're expecting bigger, nicer waves today. Woo-hoo! As for the wind, hopefully not as crazy as the last few days, but you never know. Still forecasting "fresh-strong" trades.

I had a chance to sneak up to Hookipa on Wednesday and took some more windsurfing porn shots for you. We had off and on rain showers (and rainbows) with up and down gusty conditions in the late afternoon (Kanaha was mostly sunny and very windy earlier in the day). The pros are still here and the photo shoots are still going on. I'm amazed at how much action can be packed into a little time and space. I took all these shots in about an hour, between 3:30 and 4:30. As you can see, still a bit crowded at Hoo. But lots going on. Enjoy!