Winds Back Up

We got a day or two of relief from high winds earlier this week. Wednesday's wind felt very strange - it was the first time I've been underpowered in weeks. Wind was pretty onshore and in the upper teens. My 5.0 and big board were barely enough, but it felt good to just cruise around in mellow conditions for a change.

That all changed yesterday when the wind kicked back in. Way OPd on my 4.5 in the afternoon. 4.0 woulda been mo' betta. Direction was swirling all around and gusty as hell.

Today it got even windier- wind in the upper 20s, even spiking into the mid-30s for awhile.

An observation on the National Weather Service and Wind Guru forecasts this month ... they're crap! NWS has been saying 10 - 20 all this week. In reality we've gotten anywhere from 4.0 to 5.8 conditions on a given day. They even predicted only 10 - 15 mph on Tuesday, but it Tuesday we saw solid 4.0 conditions with winds averaging in the upper-20s to 30 mph range. The NWS forecast for Maui is broken down into zones which, theoretically, takes into account central Maui's natural venturi effect. I think their models need some tweaking.

Wind Guru has been even worse, predicting winds in the mid-teens each day. Moral of this? If you're coming to Maui on a windsurfing vacation and you're closely monitoring the NWS and Wind Guru forecasts to get an idea of what your vacation will be like ... don't bother. Best just to figure that in summer you're likely gonna be on small gear and the rest of year could be anything from a 3.0 to a 10.0.... but with waves.