Volcom Fiji Pro surf forecasts
There's a bunch of swells expected to arrive from Sunday thru' Wednesday. In fact the leading edge of Monday's pulse is actually due to push through on Sunday afternoon (Tp 21s), peaking Monday afternoon, with a second, stronger swell due to peak on Tuesday, followed by a mid-range SW swell then due to also arrive sometime late Tuesday, before they both ease slowly into Wednesday.
So the big question is - where will we see the biggest waves? And will they coincide with good conditions?
For my money (and as per yesterday's notes) this will happen on Tuesday.
Tuesday looks good light winds forecast - be at Cloudbreak
Looks like those incoming swells have dwindled a bit.
Still a bit of size but they've passed up some good waves the last few days waiting for this week and its looking less than stellar now
Nah they still look pretty good - Sydney picked up a strong pulse of south swell yesterday morning that should peak at Coudbreak tomorrow afternoon in the 6ft+ range (there's another new swell due to fill in today that should generate some solid waves at CB by late arvo). Conditions are much better today (and tomorrow) compared to the last few days as well, where the winds were quite gusty.
I tend to agree with Lolo. Compared to what the forecasts were indicating late last week for Tues/Wed of this week, they've considerably downgraded that.
I don't understand why they're on hold today? From what I can see there should be swell in the water over there already this morning, and from what I'm seeing, there's only a slim chance for that new swell to arrive very late in the afternoon/evening tonight.
And winds don't look any different today compared to tomorrow and Wednesday's forecasts so I can't see why they're not running this morning.
Clearly they must be waiting for this swell tomorrow? For me, Wednesday still looks much much more contestable with multiple swells in the water, meaning much more consistent conditions for a surfing contest to run in IMO.
Braithy just emailed saying he's surprised they didn't run yesterday - said was 4-6ft and clean all day. He also reported that today is "a good 5-foot on the sets and the wind is almost true offshore at Cloudbreak. There's long lulls. They still say 5 foot is too small to run the event."
IMO, the forecasts haven't changed much at all for the next few days - I've been expecting a peak somewhere in the 6ft+ range for this next event, the only changes have been in the timing (still looks to be on Tuesday afternoon with maybe some 8ft bombs on dark).
My main concern now is that the trades are modeled to freshen on Wednesday, so today and tomorrow will definitely have the best conditions. But, I am certainly not worried about size at all for the event. The only negative about these incoming swells will be their inconsistency, but as a rule that's pretty much standard for Fiji anyway.
They still say 5 foot is too small to run the event.
By: "thermalben"
Shame they don't use that rule in Brazil!!!! ;)
Why haven't they run the last couple 'o' days? I think they took their eyes off the ball a bit and hoped for the same type of waves as last year instead of surfing whats infront of them!! Its like pulling up to one spot and saying 'round the corner will be better" and you end up driving around all day when the first spot was best. Any of these waves were better than Brazil.4-6ft too small? WTF!!
They've definitely dropped the ball. The day after we ran up until heat 4, round 3 ... we should've ran out the rest of round 3. The reason at the time was there were too many lulls.
My immediate thought was: Well lets extend the heats to 40 minutes from the previous day's 35 minutes. We'd still have cleared round 3 off the books, and would only have 8 odd hours of business end surfing to run.
Judging by the webcast, winds are 15-20kts SE at Cloudbreak but it doesn't seem to be affecting the waves too much. Nice to see some bomb sets in the mix too!
Rather than keeping all of our forecasting notes internal, I thought it'd be worth documenting the forecasting procedure for the Volcom Fiji Pro. We did our first forecast for the event yesterday and I'll post it up shortly. If you've got any questions, Craig and I are also happy to answer them.