Green alert for Peahi Challenge
Like last year, the Peahi Challenge is getting another early season green light. Overnight the WSL pushed the button for the most anticipated event on the Big Wave Tour to run either Friday and/or Staurday (local time).
"This swell looks really promising, so we’ve issued a Green Alert to run on Friday and/or Saturday,” said Mike Parsons, WSL Big Wave Tour Commissioner. “We have a long period swell coming from the northwest direction. We will continue to monitor the conditions to determine which days we will run the contest. We could potentially see heats on both Friday and Saturday or just one of the two days. We are excited to get the first event of the winter season underway and witness the world’s best big wave surfers take on Pe’ahi for the third year in a row.”
Billy Kemper has dominated the Men’s Peahi Challenge since its introduction to the WSL Big Wave Tour and will look for his third-consecutive win at Jaws this weekend. Kai Lenny, winner of the Puerto Escondido Challenge earlier this year, leads the 2017/2018 BWT rankings heading into the second event of the season. Lenny earned an Equal 9th place result at Peahi last season and will now look to surpass that result to maintain his World No. 1 position on the men's BWT leaderboard.
Kemper launching during the 2015 Peahi Challenge
In conjunction with the Men's, the Women’s Peahi Challenge will also run this weekend. The format will be a one-off Final. Maui local Paig Alms won last year's Women's Peahi Challenge.
The current forecast has an expansive fetch of severe-gale W/NW winds directly east of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula resulting in the formation of an XL long-period NW groundswell.
The long-period forerunners should be up around 23-24s with the bulk of the groundswell due to fill in late Friday. We should see sets building to the 18-20ft+ (35-40ft faces) range across selected north facing breaks under fresh E/NE trades. First light Saturday should see similar size with only a slow taper through the day due to the protracted nature of the storm.
Men's Pe'ahi Challenge invitees:
Invitees: Grant Baker, Pedro Calado, Greg Long, Jamie Mitchell, Billy Kemper, Nic Lamb, Will Skudin, João De Macedo, Cristian Merello, Kai Lenny, Makuakai Rothman, Lucas Chianca, Francisco Porcella, Trevor Sven Carlson, Tom Lowe, Shane Dorian, Ian Walsh, Albee Layer, Mark Healey, Aaron Gold, Tyler Larronde, Nathan Florence, Koa Rothman, Ryan Hipwood
Alternates: Shaun Walsh, Danilo Couto, Torrey Meister, Peter Mel, Alex Botelho
Women's Pe'ahi Challenge invitees:
Invitees: Paige Alms, Justine Dupont, Andrea Moeller, Keala Kennelly, Felicity Palmateer, Bianca Valenti
Alternates: Emily Erickson, Nicole Pacelli, Laura Enever
Comments
Albee Layer is suspect on the size:
"Having a horrible time in Portugal. Really want to cut this trip short, fly around the world and send it at mid size, onshore jaws.... haha I hope I'm wrong but I'm very suspect of this forecast but we'll see. "
We will have to wait and see......
They have the swell friday , then the more suitable wind saturday.
Looks like they will be trying to fly all equipment from Portugal to maui in two days ......
Leading edge hit the 51101 buoy (NW of the Hawaiian island chain) a few hours ago with peak swell periods of 24 seconds, though it’s now down to 21 seconds.
Buoy data has been slowly climbing at the 51101 buoy - the earliest upstream measuring device at our disposal - but it jumped more prominently at the last reading (7:30am local time); it's now reading 16.4ft at 19 seconds (though, there's been 18-20kts of wind at the buoy for the last twelve hours, and I'm not sure how much windswell is in the mix).
For perspective, this buoy is about 520km NW of the North Shore, so a swell train at 19 seconds would take around ten hours to reach the North Shore (a little less when the swell direction tends more N'ly).
However, it's about 720km from the buoy to Peahi, which adds almost four hours to the arrival time. That means the current kick we're seeing at the 51101 buoy won't appear until mid-late evening.
The WSL press release just arrived as I was typing this:
"The Northern Hawaiian buoys are showing a building long period swell expected to arrive midday," said Mike Parsons, WSL BWT Commissioner. "Competitors will be in position at the iconic Maui break at 10:30 a.m. Hawaii Time and will be on standby to start as conditions warrant. We hope to hold all four men's Round 1 heats in an hour-long format today, should conditions maintain quality. All remaining men's and women's heats will take place on Saturday, October 28 at 7:00 a.m. HST (note: Sunday in AU). Our goal is to take advantage of the swell that is expected to be full power through the first half of the day. Based on this schedule, another four hours of competition should complete the Pe’ahi Challenge by the middle of the day."
Also, the Pauwela buoy (just off the northern coast of Maui, just 13km NW of Peahi) is unfortunately offline so we can't validate the arrival time locally (apart from visual observations).
However we can use the Hanalei (Kauai) and Waimea Bay (Oahu) buoys to measure the trend - Hanalei did pulse 14.1ft at 22 seconds around 7am but the period is settling and I think we're still some time away from the main pulse.
Wave heights at Waimea have been steady around 7.2ft for the last nine hours, swell periods were initially 22 seconds but have settled to 20 seconds.
So, the swell seems to be on track but we probably won't see any major action at Peahi until well after lunch.
Its On in 30 mins.
Shame about the (lack of) consistency as there's some great viewing when the sets pour through. Starting to get pretty big now too.
Is he alive.....fuk thats gutsy
Good call on the 15 feet range hey!
It's cool seeing a pulled back shot of the wave, it's east to think yeah id have a go it's not too bad looks mellow and easy.
Then they zoom in on a set and you quickly change your mind.
It's kind of interesting to watch and the wow factor is big, but an hour latter it's like okay..done until next year, fully respect what they do but it's just a totally different sport to everyday surfing.
Alternative format> Highest scores of round one .
I.Walsh 26.13 B. Kemper 21.51 L.Chianca 20.50 C.Merello 19.94 K.Lenny 19.37 M.Heally 18.83 J.Mitchell 17.87 K.Rothman 17.84 M.Rothman 17.27 R.Hipwood 15.03 D.Couto 14.84 P.Caldo 14.71 .
Above riders should advance to the semi finals based on heat scores .
How G.Long should Advance with a 13.94 whilst K.Rothman Fails to advance with 17.84 is beyond comprehension.
Shame its not a bit more consistent cause then we wouldn't have to listen to Peter Mell talk shit but he s doing his best i suppose with a lot of down time between sets,but when the waves do come in its a show stopper.Hats off to all the guys out there, it would be heart in the mouth stuff looking down and along a huge wall of water thats going to go top to bottom and your lifes on the line........bring on more sets!