This should cause Peconic Jeff to bug out. Wave clouds...hell yeah! Spotted on Facebook in a post by Ely, this image was taken in Alabama a day or two ago. From the Cloud Appreciation Society: "The breaking waveforms of Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds are the result of shearing winds up at cloud level. A particular type of turbulence can develop in a layer of cirrus cloud, which happens to form below an inversion ...between air currents of differing speeds and/or directions. Sea waves break as their bases are slowed down upon reaching shallow water and their crests surge ahead. Cloud waves break in the same way: when their crests are pushed ahead of their troughs by the difference in air currents"
A SUP surfer named Chuck Patterson shot this last summer at San Onofre in San Diego. It’s your basic “stick a gopro camera in the water and enjoy footage of great white sharks circling you” deal. I would have bugged out. Oh yeah, and paddled back to shore toot sweet. But Chuck was in awe of the moment, and kept shooting. He’d actually seen a shark there the day before, and returned this day with his camera HOPING to get footage of the sharks. He tells the story of the experience on his blog.
Me I’ve only seen a shark once ever while out on the water, and that was enough. More than enough. It suffices. Peconic Puffin Contributing GoPro Nature Boy Peconic Jeff hasn’t caught anything like this. Something tells me he might like to. I don’t want to be there if and when… Nice work, Chuck!
This is not a windsurfing post. I apologize in advance if this complete departure from wind and wave annoys you (if you suspect it might, it probably will...quick go to Continent Seven and check out some great windsurfing media.) This here post is about a piece of music I stumbled over (on McPhilly's blog) by the group Rising Appalachia. Before hitting the Play icon I googled the band's name. The first description I read (from jukeboxalive.com) began thus:
"Rising Appalachia is a post-apocalyptic sister duo of indie-freak-folk, old-time mountain tunes, fiddle banjo duets, experimental percussion, and piercing vocal harmonies..."
They had me at "post-apocalyptic sister duo of indie-freak-folk". And I can get David Van Tieghem on your experimental percussion ass! So here is "Scale Down" by Rising Appalachia:
Music is not really out of my lane...I know more about music than I do about windsurfing ("I WOULD HOPE SO!" shout all my windsurfing buddies.) But this blog is supposed to be about windsurfing and stand up paddle surfing. I'll get back to that ASAP.
Rainbows highlighted beauties like these as they rolled through Tiana last Sunday. And Jeff Schultz (carrying not one but TWO cameras with him as we SUPped in overhead waves) snapped away. He's got stills and video from the day on his blog.
That is a navigational chart of the Marshall Islands, showing "directions & interactions of the
ocean swells as they pass through." For real. I learned this from Bonnie Queen of the Kayak Bloggers, who has a post about the chart and links to all sorts of info about these "paperless charts". Bonnie wrote:
I think
it's safe to say that almost anyone that grew up in (or has even just
spent some time in) the Pacific Triangle has seen one of these.
I grew up in Queens, New York, and most assuredly have never even imagined such a thing, much less seen one. More info at Frogma.
Last week Peconic Jeff and I went down past the Flying Point side of Mecox Bay to check out the surf at the Cut... the Cut so named because Mecox Bay is only an actual bay when the barrier beach that seals it off from the ocean is cut by the town (to lower water levels built up by rain over the months) or by the ocean (a big storm often does the trick.) The water that runs one way or another is called (I swear) a seapoose. Before you pooh pooh the seapoose you may want to check out that link...they've been seapoosing all the way back to the 1600's and beyond.
OKAY LET'S BRING THIS BACK TO WATERSPORTS!!!
The gentleman operating the big yellow digging machine stopped digging for awhile and came over to talk to us. He explained that they weren't simply draining Mecox like they usually do, but instead were trying to deepen the channel to the middle of the bay...what he called "deep water" (what we call "six feet" there) in order to improve overall circulation, which should improve the health and mood of the resident shellfish (until they're boiled alive in fine kitchens.) When we told him we windsurfed Mecox Bay and had noticed how it had been weedier and somewhat stagnant this past season he brightened considerably...we were people who actually noticed and appreciated the water state in the middle of the bay!
So for Mecox windsurfers this is entirely good news...fresh perky water to shred from the Yacht Club and Flying Point launches. How about the ocean...how will the surfing break known as The Cut fair? For now we must wait and see, but the Puffin has been told that historically outflow from Mecox has improved the outer sand bars.
(Video: From Mecox to the Atlantic, watch the seapoose (and Jeff). Map adapted from Google Maps.)
I just did a quickie post about the dolphin/human surf scene in Cape Hatteras. Earlier today I got an email from Bowsprite (the mad genius also responsible for half of Henry's Obsession) with a link to an orca livening up some kayakers' day.
And now on the Maui Windsurfing Blog there's a video clip of a humpback whale rooting on a wave sailor at Hookipa. Tail-thumping fun, and I don't mean at a distance! Enjoy the wavesailing, and look for the whale starting at 2:14. The still frame presented here does not do the moment justice.
Friday's high tide is going to be very high. Here comes the proxigean tide! The moon is going to be exceptionally close to the earth (like 220K miles...about as many miles as Andy Brandt puts on his van in a year) and with the corresponding full moon, La Luna's gravity is going to tweak the tides to the max. At least that's what they tell me.
"The Proxigean Tide occurs when the Moon is at its closest point in its orbit to the Earth and in its New or Full Moon phase."
It turns out that this monster is in southwest Australia, and is called "The Right". I'm intrigued and fearful of the wall of water that seems to ride on top of the wave.
The wave was called at 41 feet. At an undisclosed location in Australia, surfer Kirby Brown ultimately wiped out and tore up his shoulder in the wash. Can you imagine windsurfing that wave?
It's one o'clock in the morning in New York City...two hours since Barack Obama was declared President-elect. Near Union Square the noise level of people celebrating dwarfs midnight on New Year's Eve. People are cheering, cars are honking, and this has been going on for hours. I walked outside awhile ago and the streets were a sea of exuberance.
Just this last Sunday we had a warning that waterspouts might materialize whilst the east end crew were tearing it up at The Bowl. Didn't see any, though. Now we learn that yesterday at Hecksher a waterspout came through about one third of the way across the bay ("Awesome but it killed the wind!" said John Sasson in the Yahoo LI Windsurfing Group.) Mike Burns says "it was so sweet because we
actually saw it form. The water just started lifting in a spiral and
did make it all the way up to the clouds from the front. The back side of the front
looked like the eye wall of a hurricane. Really cool stuff."
Those are some fine lips. Don't tell me they're not.
The thing is, if you kissed those lips, you couldn't even get her name. Not even her species! She (and a bunch of other mindblowing creatures) have only recently been discovered in the deepest parts of the deepest parts of the oceans (deep squared YES!!) and can now be seen in a fantastic book called The Deep-The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss by Claire Nouvian.
I've been checking out photos of strange things from the abyss forever, but this book is the winner. There are creatures that look like spaceships. Creatures that look like space stations. Wonderfully crazy jellyfish. And down in the deepest cracks of Davy Jones' locker, worms step up to the plate when it comes to fashion.
There are of course the requisite deep sea badasses, with mugs that say they WILL throw down with anything in Alien. But the beauties really get me. I am buying this book. (This is the Dumbo Octopus. For real.)
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