Surfski Knowledge Base

Reivers Dustin
Mar 28 #28896

A solid, steady wind at my house. Looks heavy on web-cam. Any of you kids that go out and play on the waterway today should have plenty of waves.

Conditions (Rating)
David Hooper
Mar 28 #28901

In trying to decide whether or not to paddle today (not yet…), I've had ample opportunity to try to develop a rating criteria for waves and weather to help inform my decision:
Wind speed: of course we all look at that. I've been looking at all the iKitesurf sites around the Bay and taking whichever has the maximum.
Waves: using the following criteria from the Post Point webcam:

whitecap abundance and size: 0 - none; 1 - regular small ones; 2 - regular large ones; 3 - pretty much every wave out there.
buoy bob-o-meter: how much is the buoy moving up and down? Scale in development, but tentatively, it's been at a 1+ (the entire base plus some of the tower obscured as buoy goes into wave troughs).
buoy tilt-o-meter: how much is the buoy tilting back and forth? 0 - not discernably; 1 - 5 to 15 degrees; 2 - 15-30 degrees; 3 - > 30 degrees

General weather: rain, fog, etc.

Obscur-o-meter: 0 - all clear; 1 - Lummi Island not readily visible; 2 - Buoy not readily visible; 3 - near shore not readily visible.

Seems that we've been in the 2's to 3's in most categories since 10 or 11…

Dave H

Reivers Dustin
Mar 28 #28902

Well. This is like the prison inmates deciding to just number all the jokes they tell. David, we've moved on to rating the different condition criteria that have come and gone.

I would say yours is a solid 8 out of 10. Michael M's was a 9. My own system was thrown overboard as un-useable. (I just said crap like, “Chunky Munky”, “A tad Technical”, “Puckery”, “totally gnar”, …)

Medler had some logic to it. Except still a bit subjective. I confess I can't recall it (-required more than one brain cell to remember).

Definitely good to refer to the buoy. And today is “totally gnar”. rd

Denise Weeks
Mar 28 #28903

An esteemed paddler who will go unnamed here called it “stout.” For me, it was “one wave at a time” verging on “survival is my goal.” It was because the gusts and the waves weren’t going in the same direction, and gusts picked up quite a bit approaching Squalicum. I knew to stay right this time to be on the correct path toward the beach, but then that got me into some extra rebound, perhaps, from Clark’s Point area to MP. Then more gusts than I expected past MP. Paul has video. I hope I’m not in it!

Denise

John Rybczyk

Mar 28 #28905

Dr. Medler's scale considers the upwind punishment vs. the downwind reward. Jeff H.'s scale has reduced it all to the simple question, “Can I get my boat on and off the car by myself.” Speaking of Jeff, he found a surf ski/OC stand made of PVC and nylon webbing at Marine Park last week and posted about it here. It was getting dark, there were no cars in the parking lot and he was pretty sure that it got left behind and he didn't want the Port folks to take it away when they locked the gate at night. It is now in my van and will remain there for a while. If it is yours, drop me a line here.

Paul Reavley
Mar 28 #28906

One question I have with ratings from whatever view you are watching - these are all just momentary takes on conditions. But what I saw from the wind apps predicted for today was the wind swinging from SE early all the way around to W in the later afternoon. My impression is that the timing of these changes is often not perfectly predicted in the weather apps. So that variability has to be taken into account also.

One of my current working theories is that when we get SW swell along with wind that is coming S-SE or even more east that that often leads to turmoil, turkey-jerky, chunk-a-hula, rocky-monkey or whatever you want to call it in parts of the Bay. And that's kind of what we had for a good part of our Wildcat to Squalicum run this morning (on the water some time after 10 am).

I'll probably post some video from our run, but I'm still trying to decide how much of my thrashing I want to include.

David Hooper
Mar 28 #28907

Shortly after publishing on this list serve today The Best Rating Scale Ever You MFs (to be known hereafter by its witty acronym TBRSEYMF), I noticed that the wind had dropped substantially, but not yet shifted west. Hoping the conditions had switched from “totally gnar” to “yeah baby!” (due to modest winds but continued waves from the south), I donned my wetsuit and quickly zipped down to Marine Park. By the time I'd texted D Mow to “come on down!”, had a quick chat with Mike G who had spontaneously showed up for the same lull, and started paddling, all within ~20 min of first noticing the lull, things had gotten a bit more puckery. I was barely able to grind my way up to Post Point, and realized that conditions were way over 1 on the WTF scale, maybe even approaching 10 (the scale technically approaches infinity as one's upwind speed approaches 0). I barely managed to turn around because it was a tad technical in the chunky monkey rebound and cross swell now coming in from the SW, but I managed to make it back to the beach with my tail between my legs. Mike had been smarter and turned around earlier. Dennis had been smartest, and not bothered putting in. But I'm glad that my new rating scale proved so useful in communicating the day's conditions to my fellow paddlers, and the experience gives me the chance to coin a new term: “sucker lull”.

Dave H

Duncan Howat
Mar 28 #28909

Dave , I like the rating scale, however another one is that when the ski area can't open at all all day, then things will probably go bad on the bay. NWAC said this early am, when we called the forecaster “ well you won't see a 100 but 75 for sure”. The most intense white out in 3 years. Almost got lost several times just going from White Salmon to other base area. Now it stopped. Unusual for late March. D

Reivers Dustin
Mar 28 #28910

OK, that was groove. Because like, the whole thing is to com the gnar level such that outsiders kinda think they get it, but you can tell that they don't. dude.

Michael Medler
Mar 28 #28911

For the uninitiated, the Medler Wind-to-Fun ratio, or “WTF system,” is a mathematical approach to categorizing the subjective ratio of the pleasures and displeasures associated with the experience of lap-paddling in which a subject experiences both the rigors and rewords of paddling both upwind and downwind segments in equal distance and measure (not applicable to car based down-winders). If the efforts and rigors of the upwind segments are in line with the expected thrills and pleasures of the downwind segments, we can say the ratio was 1 to 1. You can see how this is independent of wind speed and wave quality. Rather, it is the ratio that is important. In flat water with no wind we would expect to see a ratio of 1/1. However, if the efforts are non-congruent with the rewords, the ratio might start to rise well above 1.0. For example a WTF of 2.0 indicates that the downwind segments are only half as satisfying as you would expect after the upwind segment, in which case it might be reasonable to complane about a “totally WTF paddle.” As Dr. Hooper indicates, this has no top end and WTF can approach infinity as he described today. Hence, the high information content available in a statement like “dude today was like totally WTF!” Alternatively, as WTF approaches “0” one nears the perfect bliss of effortless upwind and nirvanic down-winds. One might say, “today I almost zeroed out… dude.” The advantages of this system are that it can be applied to any combination of wind speeds and water conditions. Also, as a subjective ratio, there is literally no end to the possible disagreements and associated discourse leading to community building interactions and discussions.

Humbly,

Dr. Bigword

Paul Reavley
Mar 28 #28914

It was out of our comfort zone in several stretches today from Wildcat to Squalicum Beach. I don't think my video shows quite how off balance we were at times, particularly with the gusts. We stayed well right all of the way to Marine Park. Passing MP we got into some of the protected zone there which lulled us into some false confidence which was blasted away by the strongest gusts of the trip in the middle of the upper Bay.

Wildcat to Squalicum 3/28/2021

Bonus reel: Surfing into Squalicum Beach the end of the trip surfing into the Beach was easily the most reasonable, fun section for us.