The smokin spring and summer Maliko report

[LaPerouseBay]

Ha! I can't wait to ask HM about that.  He probably cut her off and got an earful.   Too funny.  She was going easy yesterday, so I pulled out all the stops and stayed with her for the whole second half.  When the canoes came by she did some big efforts which were pretty impressive.  

Today was gusting over 40.  I took some great pics of Suzie Cooney on her 14 glide.  That girl is fearless.  She always goes to Kanaha.  Last winter HM and I were out on a very windy, big NW swell day.  HM got the longest ride of his life across the lower reef, finishing at the oil tanks.  I finished at the harbor in my oc-1 and kissed the sand.  Suzie went across the Kanaha reef that day, got munched and had a big adventure.  As I recall, her partner got mowed - lost their board - and she was afraid they had drowned.  It's on her site.  Scary story. The waves were really, really big that day.  

I looked at my chart and noticed what may be my longest glide yet.  It happened at Upper Kanaha, ~ 10mph average for almost 2 minutes.  That's over 500 yards.  I'm still wondering how the fast guys do 10 mph for 9 miles...

Sadly, the pics of Suzie will have to wait for another day.  My camera is in the rice baggie.  Somehow the files got corrupted.  Everything seems dry, but I'll give it some time to dry out before shooting again.  Very fun day.  

[LaPerouseBay]

Camera came back to life, pics intact.  

The sailing canoes were in town, rigging up for Friday's race from the harbor to Lahaina.  They did Lahaina to Molokai Sunday.  These boats really motor when the wind is up.  And the wind was very, very good both days.



From the water.



This is from the web, on another day.  



Here's the beautiful and talented Suzie.  



And a client, Bill the retired airline pilot.  Super nice guy.  His leash got severed going across the reef on 12-2-10.  His board washed up on the beach and Suzie got pretty worried.  I asked Bill about it yesterday.  He said the current made it difficult to get to the beach.  He swam for an hour and a half.  

I remember that day vividly.  I've never seen the water moving around so much.  My mantra was 'don't break the boat.'

http://www.standupzone.com/forum/index.php?topic=9680.0

[LaPerouseBay]

My oc-1 blade snapped off about a mile from home on a south shore run this afternoon.  (How's that for a segue?)  Thankfully, the wind was straight behind me.  I used my slippers and Jamie Mitchelled it in - even caught a few glides.  It was kind of fun.  

Very lucky it happened so close to shore - and home.  Paddled oc-1 on a maliko Saturday.  Losing the blade out there could have been ugly.  Paddling by hand may not have been an option.      

I'll be carrying a spare from now on.    

[1paddle2paddle]

My oc-1 blade snapped off about a mile from home on a south shore run this afternoon.  (How's that for a segue?)  Thankfully, the wind was straight behind me.  I used my slippers and Jamie Mitchelled it in - even caught a few glides.  It was kind of fun.  

Very lucky it happened so close to shore - and home.  Paddled oc-1 on a maliko Saturday.  Losing the blade out there could have been ugly.  Paddling by hand may not have been an option.      

I'll be carrying a spare from now on.    

That's one area where SUP is safer than OC-1 and even moreso surfski - that of equipment failure.

You break a paddle or rudder on the SUP, you lay down and paddle in.  When the rudder broke on my ski (fortunately at the very end of the run) paddling it at all was extremely difficult.  I tried laying on it and paddling by hand, it was a no go.  So I paddled it with my legs in the water but it was absolutely uncontrollable.  Luckily for me I was only about 1/4 mile from the finish, but that 1/4 mile took me over 20 minutes.  Had it happened out in the rough water it would have been a true nightmare.

[LaPerouseBay]

Indeed, boats can be so much worse than standups when things go wrong.

Most of the oc-1's I see have rubber wrapped around an iako.  I hope I never have to use it.  They say it's handy to stabilize a broken rudder cable. 



A few people have asked about the snapped paddle.  It was a frankenstein made up of various parts - not a retail model.  My first oc paddle had a carbon blade with a wood shaft.  The wood cracked about 8 months ago.  I removed the wood and glued in a carbon shaft.  The wood was easy to get out with sharp tools, but I  compromised the carbon fibers deep in the hole - down where the shaft bottoms out.  Eventually the damage worked it's way to the surface.  The break was clean and quick.  The blade sank before I could get a hand on it.         

[1paddle2paddle]

Another emergency broken cable fix I read about on surfski.info was to carry a small piece of foam which could be used to jam the rudder in the straight ahead position.  In fact I carry a piece with me in case I break a cable, and when my rudder broke I thought no big deal, I will wedge the foam in to keep the rudder straight and paddle in.

But when I flipped my boat over to my surprise the rudder was simply gone - the shaft had broken and the rudder sank, so my piece of foam didn't help me.

[LaPerouseBay]

The south shore has great downwinders.  If the trades have enough NE, they usually make the turn down the coast about 1 -2 pm, and hold until just before dark. 

This site is useful for watching the wind direction at the airport.  40 degrees NE is ideal.  50 and 60 also work, but the wind is more likely to shut down or switch direction.  Coincidentally, 40 degrees (and lower) is when maliko is less user friendly.   

http://weather.noaa.gov/weather/current/PHOG.html

This site is useful as well.  It's a nice illustration of how the wind wraps around Haleakala in the afternoon.  Daytime heating of the hillside draws the wind down the coast.  It's accurate for maliko runs too.   

http://weather.mhpcc.edu/wrf/maui2/

This is how the wind can go up or down the south shore, with E trades.  The time of day, cloud cover and wind direction all play a part. 





This webcam is at the north end, overlooking maalaea bay.

http://www.mauisunseeker.com/webcam

This one is at the Mana Kai, a popular finish spot.  A good run will have solid rollers here.  It's  popular finish spot.

http://www.islandsir.com/webcam/

[headmount]

These wind maps always remind me that potentially one of the HEAVIEST downwind experiences in the world also resides in Maui County and I'm not talking about Maliko.  By the way yesterday from Maliko was off the charts.  Launched right as Kelly's van was rolling in.  Got a double decker that turned into a full on wave.  Just went ahead and rode it all the way across uppers.  Funny... I hadn't seen any waves before or after that one.  Those double deckers give the best possible top speed and the Bullet was fine... with my back foot over the rudder.  There's a little vee back behind the rudder and that's all I had touching the water.  No GPS so don't know what that speed was.  Maliko is still throwing me conditions that are a constant challenge, thinking about that other spot just scares me.

[footemaui]

The other spot get some big uns

[LaPerouseBay]

Another emergency broken cable fix I read about on surfski.info was to carry a small piece of foam which could be used to jam the rudder in the straight ahead position.

This would have helped one of the girls on our run today.  Her rudder had some problems.  She made it to the finish ok, but the rudder was moving around.  I'll be carrying a rudder jammer from now on.  She looked great early on, I could barely keep up with her.  The rudder went haywire in the bigger stuff.

South shore was really blasting today.  Minimum of three people to get each board off the trucks.  Sorry for the lack of pics, I was preoccupied with racing one of the other paddlers.  We have an unspoken yet intense rivalry.  I've only beaten him twice in many years.  Got him today.  Yes.

This was about 20 feet from shore, zero fetch.  Within 10 minutes it was shoulder high groomed perfection.



Yesterday was also very, very good.  One of my neighbors has paddled six man for many decades but is without an oc-1.  So we took my f-16 and boat out.  As we were chatting after the run I noticed something in the nose of the boat. 



Hmm, seems to have gone right through, what is that?



Let's have a closer look.  Are those teeth?



Indeed they are.



Probably one of these - crocodile needle fish (or stick fish).  Bill was surprised it poked the boat.  He thought it had flown right over.

 

Bill felt bad about the damage.  I told him don't be, this is rather cool.  Then he told me about the time a whale lifted an oc-6 he was in completely out of the water and set it back down.  He and his mates were speechless.   

It's a jungle out there. 

[DavidJohn]

Wow! Lucky it wasn't through your leg or arm.. 

DJ

[Admin]

That is awesome Larry!

[PonoBill]

Now you know why I was so spooked about that Ono just missing my leg. I think that's WAY scarier than sharks. Very random, but WOW, what an impact. I may get some shin guards.

***image redacted due to a drunken poster leaving the dims at 400 x 1 zillion***

The only proper thing to do is to eat as many of the buggers as possible. Ono--yum.

[808sup]

Crikey! That is wild larry. Glad no one got hit. Most of us don't have skin that is any stronger than carbon fiber, so we would be hurting.

[headmount]

I knew a french wndsrfr who had one of those stick fish go through his leg... was infected for almost a year, almost lost his leg.  Great pics Larry.