This is shaping up to be an epic north shore wave season. It’s only early September, we’ve already had one epic swell hit a week or so ago and now we’ve got another large north swell rolling in. This one is even big enough to warrant our first high surf advisory of the north shore surf season, with the forecast calling for surf along the north shore to be 12 to 15 feet through Friday. That will translate to over mast high conditions from Hookipa down to Uppers and at least logo high at Lowers.
The beginning of this swell started hitting this afternoon. Kanaha had some occasional head high sets, but mostly it was a confused mess of northwest swell mixed with a bit of remaining small north swell from yesterday mixed with east wind swell. Pretty bumpy and confused surf in my opinion. The wind was supposed to get lighter these last few days and it was looking pretty light early on. Arriving at Kanaha today it looked light enough that most guys were rigging 5.7s and 5.8s. Two reaches on my 5.7 however convinced me to come in and rig the 5.0, and even that turned out to be more than enough. Kind of a “technical” session in my opinion today, but others had a good time. I hear that Hookipa was logo- to mast-high with a lot of westerly component to the surf.
Yesterday was a bit of an unexpected treat. From the beach it looked like a barely doable 5.7, but the site of a bit of swell at both Uppers and Lowers got me out on the water. Turned out the 5.7 was well powered and the surf was surprisingly decent given that the forecast was for tiny surf. Instead we got some fun head high sets at Uppers setting up well enough for two or three hits per wave. Nice treat when you’re expecting to slog in flat water and instead you get to be powered up and playing in the waves.
