Nov. 2009 - Hawaiian South Shore Surf News

320 Ward Ave. #112 Hon Hi 96814 Tel 597-9055 Email [email protected]

Hawaiian South Shore

320 Ward Ave

Honolulu Hi 96814

Letter

NEWS-

PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER

320 Ward Ave. #112 Hon Hi 96814 Tel 597-9055 Email [email protected] 2

“YOUR SURF AUTHORITY”

EXPERT ADVICE & FRIENDLY STAFF

NEWSLETTER NOVEMBER 2009 VOLUME 2 ISSUE 5

Aloha Friends,

First off, let me say thank you to all who donated blood at our 3rd annual blood drive.

October pretty much came and went. Seems like the months go by faster the closer it is to the end of the year.

Waves and more waves…there has been waves for almost all of October on the North and South shores.

I’m pretty excited to be getting a new line of short boards this month. Super Brand Surfboards is scheduled to arrive just in time for the “Modern Collective” Hawaii premier.

Super Brand, for those of you not familiar with it, is a new brand of surfboards based out of California. Their focus is pri-marily on the type of high per-formance surfing that’s happen-ing now and will happen in the future.

Clay Marzo, Ry Craike, Dion Agius are a few of their team riders.

Anyway, come check out the movie and the boards at the same time.

I wrap up my story on Taiwan, check page 6. I’ve been getting a lot of interest in Taiwan after I wrote part 1 last month. If you would like to find out more, you can always check me out at the store.

Mahalo,

Keith

320 Ward Ave Tel: 597- 9055

E-mail: [email protected]


HSS MOVIE NIGHT FRIDAY

NOV. 13 TH 7:00PM

HAWAII PREMIER

OF

“MODERN COLLECTIVE”

SPONSORED BY SUPER BRAND SURFBOARDS

A collective of six surfers set out on a voyage to alter one’s per-ception of modern day surfing. Forget pre-dawn charging. For-get golden lighting. Forget glassy waters. They ignore per-fect point breaks in favor of chunky onshore wedges. This is about high performance, state of the art, modern as hell...Onshore=keepers. Follow these vogue individuals and ob-tain a candid look at what a ses-sion is actually like with the world’s best. The future has already happened you will just be watching the replay. Starring Dane Reynolds, Dion Agius, Yadin Nicol, Mitch Coleborn, Dusty Payne and Jordy Smith.



MAHALO FOR MAKING HAWAIIAN SOUTH SHORE

YOUR SURF AUTHORITY SINCE 1996



I’ve been searching for some surfing specific apps for my iPhone and noticed

there’s not much out there. I

just downloaded this handy

app the other day and am

finding it to be pretty helpful.

It gives you a somewhat ac-

curate, and detailed fore-

cast. //Keith

“This new app will automati-

cally check your location and

deliver you the nearest five

forecasts - clever iPhone. All

the detailed forecast infor-

mation is available plus the

usual charts for wind, swell

size and wave period.

For each forecast with an eyeball report you'll see a

logo denoting this - and for all our eyeball reporters

- you can now upload the daily reports after snap-

ping a pic on your phone. (If you want to become

an eyeball reporter email: gen-

[email protected])

You Get:

Location specific forecasts

Eyeball surf reports

Local and world charts

We're really stoked with it and we hope you guys

are too...

For all you guys who were using the old web based

app on your 'non' iPhones it will still be available

but you don't get all the bells and whistles.”—Magic

Seaweed

The Salani Surf Resort in Samoa, a staple among South Pacific surf haunts for more

than a decade, is gone. A result of the recent earthquake and subsequent tsunami, the camp

was simply erased by Mother Nature on the morning of September 29. Fortunately, thanks to

the quick thinking and proactive nature of the camp's General Manager, Nick Shannon, everyone in the camp survived the harrowing ordeal unharmed. Still coming to terms with

the devastation, we contacted Shannon, a 35-year-old Aussie expat, to hear the story of the

disaster first-hand and how they're already planning on rebuilding the resort.

I know that it's been a pretty devastating week for you. But can you please tell us what

happened the day the tsunami struck?

Nick Shannon: Yeah, it's been tough. But the day the earthquake hit, it was still pretty early

in the morning. I was in bed at the camp with my 16-month-old son, and I felt the earthquake start. Things were falling off the walls, everything was shaking out of control. Mate, it was

the most violent thing I've ever felt in my entire life. I can't really describe to you how vio-

lent it was. [The earthquake registered at an 8.0 and has been reported to last up to two to three minutes]. After the earthquake and the tsunami, there's a local village chief who’s 70

years old and lives next to the camp. I asked him if he ever felt anything like that before and he said that no, never. Nothing like that. We get hit by earthquakes every once in a while,

but this was something different. It was so violent.

What happened after the earthquake finally stopped?

After the earthquake, I ran outside to all of the guests and told them to get their stuff, pass-ports, money, you know, stuff like that. There were six guests staying at the camp that day.

Me and a few of the fellas that work in the camp got everybody together and into the trucks

and were ready to head to high-ground. While we were doing this, I told one of the guys that works for us to keep an eye on the reef and see if anything looks weird. A few minutes later

and he's yelling at me, telling me that something really strange going on. Right then we got

everybody in the trucks and drove up this hill to wait it out for the all clear.

After a while, I came back down and saw the devastation. The camp was gone. Just leveled.

The only thing that was left standing was the building where I lived. And unfortunately, a few of the bad eggs in the town had gone through and stolen a bunch of my stuff. They

didn't take my boards, so I grabbed those. And then I went back up the hill to tell everyone

that the camp was gone. We had two Australian doctors who I brought back down the hill to see if we could help anyone. And then I had to start arranging for accommodations for the

guests, you know, finding a place for them to stay in town before they made their way home.

So everyone was safe? No one from the camp was injured?

Yeah, no one from the camp was hurt. We were lucky; no one was surfing that morning. Everyone was kind of laying low that morning. But there were a lot of people killed. One of

the local surfers, one of the better surfers on the island, he lost his daughter. But we were

lucky.

It sounds like you and the workers at the camp saved some lives.

Yeah, we were fortunate. It was really an act of self-preservation. After I saw the devastation

down at the camp, I went back up the hill again and, a lot of the guests had Blackberrys. I

told them to ring their loved ones and tell them that they were okay. That was good. I actu-ally got through to Wendy, a woman that works at Waterways Travel to tell her that the

camp was gone. We have a real joking relationship. When I told her that Salani was gone,

she didn't believe me at first, and then I told her, no, I'm serious. It's gone.

I know you're still dealing with everything, but what's next for you and the resort?

Well, I'm going back to Australia later this week with my son. But then I'll be back in Samoa

to figure out with the owners of the resort when we can start rebuilding. We have to deal

with the insurance companies, and hopefully that will go well and we can start rebuilding the camp. Because we will. We're going to make Salani better than ever.

Magic Seaweed App For Iphone TSUNAMI DESTROYS SALANI SURF RESORT

An Interview with Resort General Manager Nick Shannon

by Jeff Mull



Swell Quality

By Dr. Tony Butt - Published on 22nd November 2007

Imagine the following situation: You look at the predictions, and you find that 6-foot, 15-second swell is forecast to be arriving from the northwest

sometime tomorrow. From experience, you know that is the perfect size, period and direction for your beach. The next day, you ‘track’ the swell by checking some wave-buoys just off the coast (wavebuoys give us real measurements of the waves, not a prediction). The swell has already hit the buoys, confirming what the models said" 6 foot, 15 seconds, straight from the northwest. When the swell actually does arrive, there is something not quite right about it. There is no wind but the sea is mixed up and kind of choppy. In general, the swell lacks power and the waves aren’t walling up the way they should. That’s disappointing, especially since it was supposed to have been all-time. Even the wavebuoy, which by all accounts cannot lie, also told us that the swell was all-time. It leaves you thinking that there must be more to it than the simple assump-tion that (a) the waves will be classic if the direction is right and the period is long, or (b) they’ll be rubbish if the direction is wrong and the period is short. The wavebuoy cannot lie, but what it can do is not tell us the whole story. That swell didn’t turn out the way we thought it was going to, not because the information we were getting was incorrect, but because the information was not complete enough. Sometimes, the parameters given to us by the wave model predictions and the buoy measurements are not enough to distinguish between a clean 6-foot, 15-sec northwest swell and a messy one. The typical ‘significant wave height’, ‘peak period’ and ‘mean direction’ you see all the time are just statistical summaries of the state of the sea. Like averages, they are very useful and convenient but tend to hide a lot of informa-tion. In reality, the sea is actually made up of a combination of waves with different heights, periods and directions, all mixed up together, even in the cleanest ground-swell. The way these different waves interact might not be distinguishable by just looking at those statistical summaries. The reason why sometimes we need a bit more information is that we don’t know how many different periods are mixed up together, and how many different directions. There might be a ‘15-second swell’ where most of the waves are indeed very close to 15 s, or the waves are spread over wide range of periods from 5 s to 25 s. Likewise, there might be a ‘north-westerly swell’ where most of the waves are coming from very close to a north-westerly direction, or the waves are coming from a wide range of directions from west round to north. A good way to illustrate the way the wave energy is distributed over all the different periods is to use a plot of wave energy versus period" a spec-trum (see diagram). A spectrum can be thought of as a kind of statistical distribution of all the component waves that go to make up the wave field. Around the peak period, the wave energy is high, whereas, at longer and shorter periods, the energy gradually diminishes. The amount of wave en-ergy at a particular period is governed by both the height and the abundance of waves around that period. For example, a peak period of 15 s (such as in the diagram) indicates more wave energy at that period than at any other, which, in turn means more and/or bigger waves with periods of around 15 s that at any other period. Now, usually, the only thing that is quoted is peak period. But the peak period only tells us at what period there is most energy; it doesn’t tell us anything about the distribution of energy at periods above or below that peak. For example, a broader and flatter curve (red) means the energy will be more spread out over the whole range of periods. Here, the sea will appear messy and confused because there are probably just as many big waves at short and long periods as there are at mid periods. In contrast, a narrow, pointed curve (blue) means all the energy is concentrated around the peak period and, therefore, the sea will only contain waves around a narrow range of periods. This gives us a purer, cleaner swell. What is fundamental about the two curves in the graph is that, although one swell is very different from the other, they both have the same peak pe-riod (fifteen seconds). It is not just the peak period itself, but the energy either side of the peak (called the bandwidth) that makes a big difference to the quality of the surf. If you are closer to the storm, then the swell is more likely to have a wider bandwidth. This is because all the different period waves that were gener-ated inside the storm itself haven’t propagated very far and, therefore, haven’t separated out from each other. If you are further away from the storm centre, the swell will be more dispersed, and a narrower range of periods will be passing a given point at any given time. In addition to the variation in period of all the waves making up the swell, there is also the variation in direction. If all the waves are arriving from a small range of directions then there is a narrow directional spread (and a clean, ruler-edged swell). In contrast, if there is a lot of variation in the direction of approach, then there is a wide directional spread (and a more mixed-up and peaky swell). In wavebuoy reports and the outputs of wave-prediction models, a common way of summarising the direction is to use the direction from which there is most energy, called the peak direction. Sometimes, the mean or average direction is used, which is the average of all the directions put together. If you only have the peak or the mean direction, then it is impossible to know how much directional spread there is in the wave field. Usually, swells that arrive from distant storms tend to have narrow directional spreads, and swells generated more locally tend to have wide direc-tional spreads. At a particular observation point, swell can only be received from within the ‘field of view’ covered by the storm itself from the point of view of the observer. A storm thousands of miles from the observer will have a narrow ‘field of view’ with the swell arriving from only a narrow range of directions. In contrast, a storm that is practically on top of the observer will have a much wider ‘field of view’ allowing swell to arrive from many different directions at once.

Wave energy as a function of period (the spectrum): The

poor-quality swell represented by the red line has a lot of

energy at all periods, whereas the good-quality swell rep-

resented by the blue line has most of the energy concen-

trated around a narrow range of periods.© 2008 - Dr. Tony

Butt


SURF TRAVEL By KeithBy KeithBy KeithBy Keith


Taiwan get waves! Taiwan get good waves!!!

Part 2 of Taiwan THE WAVES…

TTTThe waves we got in Taiwan ranged from small beach breaks to over head A-frame screaming barrels. I would say we got waves everyday except for 1 or 2days. Even when it was small there was something to ride. The tide plays a huge factor in the waves there. Even though the tide changes aren't that extreme it really af-fects the size of the surf. I was there a week but couldn't figure out if it was better on the high tide or low tide. The locals got it dialed in though, that’s why I suggest having a guide show you around for the first time. If not you’ll be driving around looking for the waves instead of being where the waves are. If you stay in Kenting, where we stayed, you’ll no doubt be surfing Nan Wan and Da Wan. Nan Wan has a right reef point. It breaks right in front of where the cooling water from the nuclear plant is discharged back into the ocean. As you walk down the beach at Nan Wan there are beach breaks with peaks scattered around. Da Wan is another beach break that gets really good. We surfed there a few times and it seems like all the locals end up surfing at either one of these two spots. If you want the really good waves you’re gonna have to drive. As you drive up the east coast, maybe 20 minutes from Da Wan, you come across cliffs overlooking miles and miles of coastline. Chialosui is a river mouth with a pretty fun right and a left on the outside corner. My friend that stayed a week longer than I did got Chialosui double overhead, he said it was really good. That’s the farthest north we went on the east coast but I know there are more spots further up the east coast. On the west coast there are a lot of spots that are pretty close together. I’d say within a 10 min drive you can check 3-4 really good waves. The main reason I went to Taiwan was to surf this spot in Fong Gang called Towers. I’ve seen pictures and heard all the stories about this left that’s 100+ yards long. But...well, as all surf trips go, sometimes you score and sometimes not. This time I didn't get to surf Towers but I’m sure I will in the near

future. Besides Towers there are a lot of spots that I saw that have the potential to be world class, including KLS which was named after me. It’s a short hollow a frame. Take off on the right and back door the left, stand up bar-rels all day. There are so many undiscovered possibilities in Taiwan, all you need to do is know where and when to look. //End.

WWW.SURFTAIWAN.COM

TOWERS PHOTO: MOON WALKER

CHIALOSUI

NAN WAN



SUPER BRANDED SURFBOARDS ARE NOW AVAILABLE

IN HAWAII EXCLUSIVELY @ HAWAIIAN SOUTH SHORE

RIDE WHAT THE PRO’S RIDE


Stand Up Paddle get together.

November 15th 2009. Meet at the Diamond Head side

of Ala Moana Beach Park canoe ramp at 7am. We will

take a leisure stroll from Ala Moana Bowls to Kai-

mana Beach and back. For more info contact Hawai-

ian South Shore at 597-9055

NOV TIDES


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Nov. 2009 - Hawaiian South Shore Surf News