After a couple of days of drenching rain Wednesday and Thursday, the sun emerged again yesterday to begin drying us out. Wind yesterday was generally out of the south and light. It was a strange site while driving down the hill to Kahului yesterday seeing the planes taking off and landing in the wrong direction. Stranger still was the near absolute calm of the ocean. No whitecaps and very oddly, little to no waves. You could see some very small surf breaking at Uppers as well as Baldwin Beach but this looked like summer time surf of a foot or two.
Today we have Kona conditions with winds out of the south still. They look a bit stronger today, possibly sailable at Hookipa Lanes, but with the surf still in the very small category it won’t make for the epic conditions Kona Lanes can be known for like we saw last December.
Looks like we’ll have another day of southerly winds before they switch back to a more easterly trade wind direction on Monday/Tuesday. That will be just in time for 2006 PWA Aloha Classic at Hookipa which starts with the amateur heats on Monday through the 10th, followed by the final wave event of the season for the PWA tour the following week. As fortuitous as the trade wind return will be the return of a north swell Sunday night – nothing epicly large, but should provide Hookipa with some good conditions for the start of the event.
I’m hoping to get down to Hookipa each day of the event to capture video and photos. As a preview to the coming event, I edited some recent Hookipa video footage into a highlight reel.
