Outer reef spot on Maui

[headmount]

My friend Ralf sent me this he wanted to show on the Zone.  He must have come to Maui around when windsurfing started in '79 because I remember him way back then.  He became an avid water sports enthusiast with wndsfng, surfing, prone paddleboarding and got into the SUP deal way before I did.  Now he's one of the fastest DW racers on Maui, usually in top ten. 

Anyway over the years we see different outer reef spots break on different sizes and directions and this particular spot is a hazard sometimes when we DW with big swells.  When we see it all wind blown, it just looks like destruction but on the right day.... in his words below.

This is upper outer outer upper Kanaha, about 10 years ago.  We were tow-surfing and the rest of the coast was too big.   We were calling this third-reef uppers.  This was the biggest I have seen it in 30+ years.  It can break way-out sometimes…...

[Cardiff Sweeper]

Oh

My

Gawd




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[covesurfer]

What Cardiff said ^^^^^^

[southwesterly]

The third pic really (really) shows the size.
Rad, capitol R.

[PonoBill]

I've never seen it anything like that, thank god. But I've seen it break perhaps one-third that size, which is more than enough for me. The biggest I've seen it was one very sketchy run I did with Randy and Chan probably five years ago. I could see it breaking from Spreklesville. Randy stopped at the edge of camp one to tell everyone to push further out because the set waves were breaking way out on Upper--"but don't try to go outside that big break, go inside of it."

I saw it go off at least ten times when we were approaching it and I was pretty scared. I didn't think it was going to work to go inside, and I was tempted to head out, but I didn't, and as I passed it the wave pitched up like a mountain, came booming towards us, then reformed into a swell and rolled under us--huge.

Scared the living crap out of me. I thought I was a goner. My chicken line would have gone right over it.

That OC2 that got the ama ripped off it a few years ago during the MCKC race went right about where I would have gone. Fortunately that was a much smaller day, still, the wave broke right on top of them and just broke the iakos off the boat.

[stoneaxe]

What Cardiff said +2....and I'll add a yikes!...for good measure.

[covesurfer]

Holy crap.

I can see the outer upper upper outer or whatever from my house. I can see how it works to go inside of it.

But, it's like a mine out there waiting to be stepped on. You need to go far enough inside of it that it reforms into a non-breaking swell or you gotta go out beyond it. What is bothering me is that I'm thinking I could go right over/through it by accident. On the other hand, this is mainly an issue when there is groundswell of more than what, say 8 feet? I don't know what the lower end of the danger zone is but at this time of year, when the ocean can still throw up a decent sized groundswell from the north or northwest, it seems like something to think about.

I'm also wondering if the outer reef would be likely to break on an easterly windswell, like we had last week. That was advisory level in size and I'm pretty sure it was well over 10 feet. I never saw the wave on Thursday and that's why I thought we were out past it. I guess we were just lucky. pucker.

[PonoBill]

It goes off on long period, good sized waves. The period is as important as the height. Short period waves won't stack enough. Windswell from local wind is short period. I'm not saying it can't, just that it's not so likely. Some of the "windswell" we get from westerly trades has a thousand miles of fetch, more than long enough for the swell train to clean up it's act and turn to longer period couples. But when the trades die at night there's not enough energy added to increase the period--it takes a huge amount of energy to build tall, long period waves. The energy in a wave is directly proportional to period and to the square of the height. A 20 foot wave with a 15 second period has about 2500 horsepower per meter of horizontal face. It takes a lot more power than that to create the wave since the process isn't efficient and the wave loses energy as it travels.

It's pretty safe to travel the line you've been taking. It's a little more sketchy to go outside further once you get to the lifeguard station at Kanaha. If you're no more than a mile offshore and you're lined up on the notch of Io Valley (or the roofs of the college) you're gold. If it's going off, you'll see it fairly often--like maybe once every ten minutes. It's those whacky times when it's right on the border of breaking that can be nervewracking. Boyum and I ran right over it when it was peaking up like a ficken mountain but not breaking one time. Scared the bejessus out of us.

[coldsup]

 Very impressive wave......glad someone has the ability and balls to surf it. What a feeling that must be.

[SuppaTime]

This discussion brings the inner geek in me out....

Another interesting feature of surface ocean waves is that they are dispersive, which means the group velocity is different from the phase velocity. The phase velocity is the speed of any single wave but the group velocity is the speed of an entire wave train. For ocean surface waves, it turns out the group velocity is 1/2 the phase velocity. Of course this is something we all have seen - if you are gliding on a deep water wave at some point it peters out and a new swell will appear behind you. If the group velocity == phase velocity, you would be able to ride forever on a single swell. People ride tidal bores for extreme distances, but that is a different wave (probably a soliton) than a deep ocean surface wave.

A comment on upper/outer Kanaha - looking at the chart from the other thread, it answers a lot from what I have experienced there windsurfing. Any north swell dumps a lot of water on Spartan reef which has no where to go, except laterally towards the deep water to the west of the reef. Windsurfing at uppers on a large north swell, there is a huge amount of water in motion towards the west. I believe this is also what pumps up "weird wave" between upper and lower Kanaha. I would think DW'ing across the upper Kanaha reef, you would rocket out of there when there is a large N swell running.

It is an interesting place with a lot going on.

[TonyGring]

Hoo Boy.......  Brings da memories.....   March 88 or 89. Kanaha. Really windy. Really big.   Me and my friend Todd Little talked ourselves in to going out on our sailboards.   Whole reef was closing out cept for one little keyhole every 20 minutes.  Made the keyhole and just kept going out and out.  No intention whatsoever to ride waves.   Absolute biggest , most massive open ocean swells I've ever been in.  I was scared to death but dumbstruck by the experience.  Finally had to  come in . Barely outran a wave that looked to be double mast high. Breaking in slow mo.  I was shaking after we made it in. We each said to the other " What were we thinking? "

[TonyGring]

My friend Ralf sent me this he wanted to show on the Zone.  He must have come to Maui around when windsurfing started in '79 because I remember him way back then.  He became an avid water sports enthusiast with wndsfng, surfing, prone paddleboarding and got into the SUP deal way before I did.  Now he's one of the fastest DW racers on Maui, usually in top ten. 

Anyway over the years we see different outer reef spots break on different sizes and directions and this particular spot is a hazard sometimes when we DW with big swells.  When we see it all wind blown, it just looks like destruction but on the right day.... in his words below.

This is upper outer outer upper Kanaha, about 10 years ago.  We were tow-surfing and the rest of the coast was too big.   We were calling this third-reef uppers.  This was the biggest I have seen it in 30+ years.  It can break way-out sometimes…...

   Ralph Sifford?

[PonoBill]

Yes, HM is undoubtedly talking about Ralf Sifford.

One of the coolest things about waves is that all the stuff you see and experience is explainable by physics. Which of course is why its fairly easy to model once there's enough data. The things we experience, such as wave sets, the variation of breaks during tides, how waves focus or defocus across land features, and the different velocities of the wave trains extending from a single storm all behaves very nicely according to well understood mechanics. It's a very beautiful system, well worth reading a few books and doing some googling.

[RainWaves]

^^ "Waves & Beaches" by Willard Bascomb (IIRC) used to be the standard of learning and understanding these things. It is an older book, with much of the data gathered in the '50's & '60's. I got my copy of it in the early '80's, and it has been AWOL for probably 20 years now 

 

[maui wave warrior]

I remember windsurfing uppers on those really really big days. The current is crazy with lots of water moving around. One year the swell was so big that there was no channel between uppers and lowers to get out through making your timing critical. If you have ever seen the picture of Naish out windsurfing at log cabins called men who ride mountains, you will get an idea of what a really big day at uppers can be like on the outside.  Such a rush to experience!!  The outside wave is like a mountain sometimes triple mast high which you can get a few turns on before racing toward shore to catch the smaller reform mast high which is hollow and fast.  One of my favorite places to windsurf when it gets really big and there is enough wind. Sup on a really big day at uppers is a whole different animal. Hard if not impossible to catch the outside mountain of water but for those with the balls and skills, the inside can be epic.