St Pat brought clean waves and hot music

St Patties day on the very green isle of Maui... how to celebrate this most holy day of days?  How about with some surfing?  The trades had calmed down for a few days while the recent big swell was still sending glassy overhead waves to the north shore.  Julia and I first decided to check out the action at Hookipa...

There was some other activity just outside the break...

I continue to be impressed with how well this Panasonic camera zooms and focuses from a distance.  This is a handheld shot taken from the overlook parking lot at the middles break, which is pretty darn far away.

Left or right - take your pick...

Focusing on the moment...

More approval from the outer lineup...

That's very clean wave...

The lineup wasn't that crowded ... everyone got their turn...

Soul Surfing

After watching these very nice but somewhat large waves at Hookipa along with the whales dancing in the background, Julia and I decided it was time to get ourselves wet.  We had two new (well slightly used) surf boards (Elua Makani from 2nd Wind) and we hadn't surfed since last Fall, so we wanted some smaller more private waves.  For that we drove to West Maui to a "secret" surf spot just north of Launiupoko called "guardrails" - which means you have to park on the other side of a busy highway and jump over a guard rail to get to the beach.  But the beach was nice and sandy and no one else was on the water when we paddled out into the 2-4 ft waves - perfect size for our first rides.  And all went well! Both our boards, an 8'6 for me and 8' for Julia, proved easy to paddle and catch rides.

Which is nice because there had been some controversy about what size board I needed.  Obviously a longer board is easier to paddle and catch smaller waves, but can be hard to manage in bigger surf.  Last fall we started with our thick and short beginner boards from Costco (Wave Storms) and from there we tried an 8'6 board and then some 7'6 mini tankers.  In what is probably not a normal progression, we had never been on anything bigger than 8'6, so I was already comfortable with that size.  Another factor was what fit inside our Maui vehicle - a Dodge Caravan (not Grand). A 9'0 board barely fit, touching both windshields, so shorter boards seemed a better option as long as we could ride them.  I should also mention that our windsurfing boards have become much shorter.  My current board, the 80l Quattro which I have been using in all conditions and all sails, is only 7'4!  Besides the performance aspects, smaller gear is so much easier to lug around.  I once had a 12 ft windsurfing board (Fanatic Ultra Cat) strapped to the top of my tiny little Honda Civic.  My windsurfing board was bigger then my car (and probably cost more)!

OK, when I said all went well above, I left out one tiny kooky moment Julia and I had during our first few minutes on the water.  I paddled out first and went out further, trying to catch a larger-ish (maybe 4ft) wave.  When I saw one coming I turned around, started paddling hard and would have got this wave.  But!  Then I noticed (and should have noticed sooner but I was so concentrating on catching this wave) that Julia was still paddling out - directly inside and now in front of me.  Instead of trying to stand I just held onto my board, with the wave breaking right behind me, and that's when I learned that you can't really steer a board that way. So I continued more or less straight without any control and hit the back of Julia's board.  The crazy thing is, for probably a 3 mile stretch of beach (at least) we were the only people out.  So we lectured each other about a) not being so close b) maybe looking first before paddling onto a wave to make sure we are not about to run over our true luv.  After that all was truly well.  Except that when we got to the beach Julia noticed that her board had a small ding. But the nice thing about glass boards and Solarez  is how easy it is to fix such things.  And so after a quick repair, all was really truly well.

Willie K at Mulligans

After the surf sesh, we wanted to check out some St Patty festivities Maui style. We had asked some friends earlier in the week where to go, and they mentioned "Mulligans in Wailea".  So we headed that way without any real clue where it was or what we would find.  Eventually, after almost confusing it with Moose McGillicutty (a very different place), we found it.  Or I should say we found the cars parked about a mile before the place.  I was about to blow the whole thing off but we found a very lucky parking spot near the entrance.  This place was huge! It turns out to be the club house / bar / restaurant  for the Old Blue Golf Course and it looked like it could hold 1000 people easy. And on this particular evening it was full.

So we walked up and discovered there was a twenty buck cover charge.  Again we were about to blow it off - seemed like a steep price just to drink some green beer - but the lady in front of us turned around and handed us a free ticket.  So the luck of the Irish came through and we were in.  And it was then that we discovered that Willie K was the headlining act for the evening. Yes! Now if you haven't spent much time on Maui you probably don't know who Willie K is, but suffice it to say that he is Maui's most famous home grown musician.  He has an operatic voice combined with the guitar skills of BB King, Santana, and Eric Clapton and can also faith fully cover Hendrix, Sting, Slash, and pretty much anyone else.  He sings Hawaiian traditional, classical, blues, jazz and all the rock standards.  He has also written a ton of his own music.  We'd seen him twice before, once at one of his own shows (which unfortunately we had to leave before the last set), and another time he did a very short set opening for Sheryl Crow.  In both cases I felt we hadn't seen his best stuff.  Well on St Patties night at Mulligan's he rocked the place for all it was worth.

He started with an electric version of Danny Boy, then jumped into some classic BB King style blues, then covered U2, the Stones, Hendrix, Santana, Ave Maria (classical),  Bob Marley, Lynard Skynard, and much more.  It was a party atmosphere and he put on a show to please the crowd, playing from 9 to past midnight without a break. And yes we stayed up past the "real" midnight for a change.  I put together a little music video / ken burns thing to give an idea what it was like.  Hope you enjoy.  Aloha!

Willie K at Mulligans from Jamin Jones on Vimeo.

Giant waves and Julia's big adventure

[ updated 4/15/2010 to add name of lifegaurd - Jeff Silva - who rescued Julia along with futher developments in this story ]

As forecast we just had two days of 15-24 ft waves breaking on the North Shore.  Hookipa was huge and closed out.  You could tell because Levi, Pascal, Jason Polakow and other Hookipa regulars were all down at lowers.  The north west buoy shows the swell taking shape...

Looks like 12 ft @18 secs was the peak. At around 18 secs the wave faces can be triple the swell height in the max sets, or so I've been told.  Anyway it was big!

Before rigging up on Monday and doing battle, we had a mini fashion show at Kanaha.  Here's Marge, Nick's mom (on the right), and Val showing off the latest in beach and surf wear.

I thought Marge's mini peace skirt and boots nicely complemented Val's flip flops and camo mini bikini.  Now this isn't just for fashion.  Val pretty much windsurfs wearing that, so clearly this is a fully functional suit!  And she, her husband Jeff, and Nick (all on Hot sails, and therefore known as the Kanaha Hot crew) , were out in Uppers all day both Monday and Tuesday, when the outer reef was at it's biggest and baddest that I've ever seen.  Unfortunately the outer reef is so far from the beach that it's hard to get a picture that does it any justice.  I tried... first a picture of lowers with a close out set (note just the tip of a sail showing on the other side of the breaking wave)

This shows a wave breaking on the outer reef at uppers early on Monday. I had my camera on max zoom so these waves are further out and bigger then they look.  Much much bigger

Fortunately we had just enough wind on both days to make it out and get some rides.  Mostly.  On my first reach at lowers I was almost out and barely made it over a giant wave.  I didn't have much juice and it was almost like a free fall dropping down the other side. I landed with no forward momentum at all.  Of course the next wave was even bigger and already starting to curl.  No way I'm making it over that.  You may find yourself in such a situation and my best advice is a) don't panic b) hold onto your gear c) consider what a great life you've had up to that point.  Besides that I made sure my mast was pointing at the wave and board  pointing toward the beach.  I crawled onto my sail, feet toward the wave, head facing the beach ready to body surf. Then I sunk the sail as much as possible.  Grab the boom near the mast with both hands and  hold on tight.  Take a few deep breaths before the wave hits.  Relax and pretend this is some kind of crazy Disney water ride. I felt the wave lift me up but I didn't quite go over the falls.  I think I sunk the sail enough that it more or less anchored my body.  As the wave broke it took the board and pulled me and the rig along - very hard.  It was almost like surfing the wave and I actually got pretty far inside on that one wave. About three more waves did more or less the same thing and I was inside in the clear.

And that was it!  I water started, headed in and up wind as much as possible and this time went for the channel.  I made it out every time after that.  As for the waves, I have to admit that some sets were so big I mostly went up the line to avoid the biggest section, and then took a few bottom turns while the wave still had some juice.  One great thing about my new quad fin Quattro board is it goes up the line really well and I can now make some hard backside turns and get to the lip.  My old single fins boards had a tendency to spin out in that situation, so if nothing else, this is something a quad fin board seems to do better (actually I think it does a lot of things better, but that might be in another post).

Tuesday the swell was a bit smaller but more northerly, which can actually make the waves at Kanaha bigger because there is no blockage from west maui and the swell hits the reef more straight on.   So the bigger sets were on a par with Monday, but everything seemed a bit cleaner. Perhaps because there was less wind.  And that was the challenge.  Maybe I was feeling a bit more confident, but Tuesday I had some of my best down the line, smack the lips ever.  I was particularly inspired on one pretty huge wave when I saw Bernd on the same wave a few turns down the line from me.  I tried to match his position and turns on the wave.  Right away he cut an  aggressive bottom turn and headed for the lip.  I could see his body position clearly, with head and upper body leaned forward and toward the wave, sail raked way back.  Now I think most of us Joe six pack sailors can always turn a little harder and lay the sail down a bit more on the waves.  Especially the bigger ones.  Having someone right in front of me doing this was really inspiring and I think I did a pretty close imitation.  So I ended up almost at the top of the wave as it started to curl, and I got a bit of air coming down and landed directly in front of the foam.  Which I'm pretty sure was my biggest off the lip ever.  Woo-hoo!  On the next turn the section was really critical.  I only went about half way up because I could see the wave pitching and I wasn't ready to get tubbed and crushed.  But Bernd was ahead of me and he shot up and got to the lip just as it was pitching and threw or attempted anyway, a ponch off the lip.  He didn't quite make it, the wave exploded, and I never saw him again. :(

Actually I looked back and saw Bernd swimming for his gear, but not too far. And I know he got a lot of good wave rides after that.  So my lesson, as in so many other situations, is you have to go for it.  I also slogged out and over some huge waves, and along with a some opportune chicken jibes, I managed to mostly escape mayhem, until about my last reach when the wind nearly died and I got caught inside by a big set while slogging. But even that wasn't so bad (I really really try to hold onto my gear no matter what now).

Ok, so Julia had a much more interesting adventure on Tuesday.  I'm going to turn the narrative over to her, but before I do, let me show the end result.  Here is our 4.7 north sail with a new radical twist away feature that Julia added mid-sesh.

As it turns out, the cut out might have been a bit too much, and, well Julia's story to follow...

Julia's Big Adventure

As I was sailing back out through the Lowers channel, I lost speed getting over the wave sets and was taken down by a curling wave.  Though it wasn't an intense maytag session, when I cleared my sail to waterstart, the entire sail was torn almost in two.  Bummer!  The dragging sail pieces made it impossible to ride back or even fly the sail, so I began swimming.  I thought that the current would push me in towards shore, but the rip was actually carrying me out to the notorious Weird Wave.  At this point a guy dropped in the water with me and shouted that I had to get out of there (no kidding) and insisted that I try to fly the shredded sail back to shore.  While proving that this was not possible, a lifeguard, Jeff Silva, suddenly appeared on his jet ski and my real Lowers session began.

Our hero instructed me to pull my board onto the sled of the ski and climb on top.  With all the drag and need to proceed slowly, we were quickly overtaken by a logo-high wave.  Jeff shouted to ditch the gear, and I had the surreal experience of speeding in front of the crashing wave while my gear rode on top of the wave right behind us.  We had to circle back out to get around to the gear.  If you've ever had the opportunity to ride a jet ski over an 8-foot curling wave, you'll understand the thrill of the speed, the gut-wrenching impact after the drop, then the whipping of the sled as we outran the next wave.  The lifeguard's eyes were shocked and pleased that I was still on board (and grinning) after a few of these.  Some of my friends caught the show as they rode in, and I don't think they've ever seen me performing so many off the lips and aerials on a wave.  Jeff maneuvered the jet ski by my gear a second time (the first one was a miss, followed by a round of wave jumping), and he held my board while I lay on my sail and held the boom with my foot on the sled.  We made it back to shore and Jeff rode off to rescue the guy he was originally sent out to help.  Miraculously, only the sail was damaged in the whole wild ride.

My rescuer, Jeff Silva, was unbelievably skilled on the jet ski and showed amazing patience waiting for an opportunity to get my gear when he could have simply brought me back to shore and let the current take my rig down to the beach in front of the waste treatment plant. Instead, there we were, riding giants like Dave Kalama and Laird Hamilton. Kudos to all the Kanaha guards!

Lots of wind, not so much waves, but change is a comin

Julia and I arrived about two weeks ago, and dutifully checked into Kanaha as soon as we got off the plane to hear that the trades had been mostly absent during the three months we were gone. Some people claimed only about three days of sailing for the whole winter. Well I'm not saying this winter on Maui was bad or anything. It's going down as one of the best winters for waves in almost 40 years. But windsurfers had to deal with some light wind, go out on the kona days, or learn to surf. Learning to surf isn't a bad option if you ask me.

Someone who I know had a lot of fun light wind sailing days this winter is Nick Warmuth. I've decided that Nick is the king of making light wind wave sailing days look exciting.  For instance take the very sad day that Julia and I were leaving early last December.  We were staying in Waiehu near a local beach known for occasionally good surfing called"Sand Piles", which is really one the rockiest beach around, with a shallow sharp reef known for cutting feet.  In fact I cut my foot pretty nicely on my last surf session there, just stepping out of the water.  So it's not a great place to learn to surf or practice slogging your 80l wave board when there's not much wind.  But that's exactly what we saw Nick doing as we drove down the road to the airport.  I took a few shots (too bad I didn't have the newer camera)...

The important thing to note is there was no wind that day. But there was Nick putting on a show.  BTW - about twenty feet in from Nick is a sharp reef that's only about two feet deep, so any kind of fall could potentially hurt. I didn't see Nick fall.

Before I forget, Waiehu had some beautiful sun rises that we had the pleasure of seeing most every day (I get up early so I can get my work done early).  You're always seeing nice sunset pictures from Maui, but the sun rises can be just as dramatic.

So some people like Nick had some great light wind wave sessions this winter. Others waited for the trades to kick in.  And they showed up about the time we arrived in Maui in late February.  In fact we've sailed 12 out of 14 days that we've been here so far.  And we could have sailed another day (March 1) if we had decided to drive way over to S-Turns where it turned out to be epic.  (and now we know the drive can be worth it). 

Not only has the wind been back, but it has been down right cranking.  Now some people credit Julia and I with bringing back the trades.  But I do believe our good friends Brian and Becky deserve more of the credit.

You see, they showed up last spring for about a week in March, and while they were here it blew hard, almost too hard every single day.  Then they left and so did much of the wind.  In fact for many weeks in   April last year we had nada wind (which was very unusual).  So sure enough, Brian and Becky stay with us from March 1-10 and this featured a couple of the windiest days we had here since, you guessed it, their last visit.  And I'm going down on record and calling last Wednesday the windiest trade wind day ever.  At least that I've ever seen.  There were gusts to near fifty at Kanaha (and I think 55MPH in some of the windier places).

In fact it was so windy that I didn't even bother to rig and go out (Julia ripped it up on her 3.7).  Which might seem like a weird concept, seeing as how we're considered Gorge sailors and high wind is supposed to be our forte and all that.  But Julia keeps track of all the days we sail, and it turns out that we sail more days in Maui (90) then the gorge (52).  So I guess we can now call ourselves Maui sailors who visit the Gorge in the summer.  And though we all love high wind sailing on the Columbia River, with the big smooth swell and all that that brings, nuclear wind here in Maui is really not all that pleasant.  I've decided that unless there's some waves worth chasing, I don't want to go out if the wind is too much for my 4.7.  Just say no to 4.2!  Well, I should add this only applies if I'm also tired and have already sailed ten days in a row.

So back to the wind. It was so windy I saved the iWindsurf chart for the day.

Note that the wind was just a touch gusty, with the peak hitting 45+ around 1-ish.  Now compare this to today, with a much more normal trade wind blowing.

Ah yes, steady 4.7 wind almost the entire day.  Now all we need is some waves.  So where are all those waves?  Well as it turns out, the strong high pressure systems that create the super strong trade wind often keep the pacific storms weak and far away and therefore, no waves.  You can see this pattern when you look at the pacific weather map from Wednesday when the wind was really cranking.

Those twin highs north of HI were sending the cranking gusty trades at us, while the lone storm was being quickly shoved far north and away.  But the good news from the wave side of the equation is this is all changing and it looks like we're headed back to a more winter like pattern.

Now we see the highs being pushed east and two big low pressure systems are centered north of HI with a juicy fetch aimed right at the islands.  From the Oahu surf forecast...

Outlook through Thursday Mar 18: a northwest swell that will produce surf well above advisory levels on north and west facing shores will arrive Sunday night and continue through Tuesday. Another advisory-level northwest swell is possible Thursday.

Which means 10-20 ft waves are possible from later Sunday through Monday, going down slowly and then coming back up again.  In other words, waves all week.  Ahh, but the wind is going to be hit and miss.  Light trades this w/e and then gusty NE wind on Monday, followed by little wind until Thursday.  But no worries, Julia and I just bought two surf boards and I've actually been hoping for some no wind surf days.  Plus it looks like an extra bonus south swell is headed here next weekend.  Life is good!