Dan (00:54)
Welcome to the Lab Rat Foiler Podcast. My name is Dan, and today we have Huey. You might know him on Instagram as Foil Me Harder. This man is a downwind foiler who's gone deep into the science behind downwinding. Welcome to the podcast, mate.
hewi (01:13)
Aloha.
Dan (01:15)
Aloha, I love the setup there with the van as well. I'm a van man myself. I love the the colors in there. You've done a good job with it.
hewi (01:24)
Thank you, thank you.
Dan (01:28)
Huey, dude, you've got a really interesting approach to downwinding and just the science behind reading swell, you know, some important moves for downwinders to hone in their downwind journey. Like we're gonna be talking about how to choose foils and how to ride different foils. but before we get into all that nerdy stuff, which man, I think this is gonna be one of the most important podcasts.
For people who are parawinging in downwind conditions and want to really hone their skills on that. I really want to understand a little bit about you though, man. Like, how did you get into foiling and what kind of foiling disciplines have you progressed through?
hewi (02:15)
Yeah, for sure. I actually have a really corny story and it has to do with a dream. I used to have a
recurring dream. Yeah, yeah. That I could float not necessarily fly like Superman, but I could kinda, you know, squirt my arms together and kinda get up to an altitude and, you know, go certain places. And long story short, I saw the Kai video, got on a foil, learned how pump, connect waves and stuff, and ever s ever since I was able to do that, I stopped having that dream. So for me, like it
It really feels like foiling came out a dream and I I've achieved it and I just can't I can't get over how good it feels, yeah.
Dan (02:52)
That is crazy, man. Is that where your
hewi (02:54)
Yeah.
Dan (02:54)
your let's call it passion for Kai came? Is that where it started?
hewi (03:00)
yeah, no, I don't know. I think he just kinda blew up really right when I was getting into foiling, like with his big wave career with his foiling, winging everything, and I was just like, This guy is on top of it. not that it matters, but like he's also like my age, my height. he's also got like annoying nerd voice. like
Dan (03:20)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (03:21)
you know, he's just like he's me but just like so much better than me and cooler than me. So I try to be like him.
Dan (03:28)
Dude, but y I think you have something over him, which is all this knowledge of downwinding, so you're not too
hewi (03:33)
How do you
Dan (03:33)
far behind, man. The how did you what was the first foiling discipline though that you started?
hewi (03:41)
Yeah, so there's a guy on Kawaii, Thor. He's handles boogie foil and I saw what he was doing and I was like, Whoa, you can throw a foil on a boogie and get pretty radical with it as far as like airs go. And
Dan (03:54)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (03:56)
before foiling I've done everything with from like, you the body surf to the boogie board to shortboard fish, whatever you name it. And I was like, you know what? I'll spend some money, I'll throw it on a boogie board, just see what happens and like I'll do it once every month kind of thing. Like
Just novelty. And yeah, I d had the most ghetto setup with like heat metal sandwiched on a foam boogie board. Like the boogie this the foil fell off like once, but it caught with a leash. and yeah, I basically just figured out how to like ride it. And it was it was hooked since the start. I was hooked since the start, and then yeah, I got fiberglass boards, got better foils, got winging, got setboards, parrowing. So I think I've got every discipline now except for the
Foil drive kind of electric foil thing,
Dan (04:42)
Yeah. Do you
hewi (04:44)
yeah.
Dan (04:44)
do you think you're gonna get into that or it's not your thing, the whole electrical stuff?
hewi (04:49)
I'm not opposed to it. right now there's a couple waves where I live that would be good for it. But at the same time, like the downwinding where I live here in Ventura, California, is so good that I don't even need more disciplines or like more reasons to get on the water, if that makes sense. So
Dan (05:06)
Yeah.
hewi (05:07)
yeah, definitely when I'm older, like that sounds super fun. but no, for now I'm good. I'm good with not having one. I'd be good with having one.
Dan (05:16)
So what's the main foiling discipline that you practice today? Do you have one or are you the type of person that will do what's the best for the day?
hewi (05:23)
I'm the type of person that'll do what's best for the day and a couple years ago I was always prone and then ever since those Kalama barracudas
Dan (05:30)
Mm.
hewi (05:31)
came out and you know we could just pop up on anything, downwind is just our go to in the summer. Every every afternoon we'll get enough wind and some really fun downwind runs. So we got a crew and that's good enough for me, you know.
Dan (05:45)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (05:45)
Fly five days out of the week, downwind after work. That's that's pretty reasonable, you know.
Dan (05:51)
Nah, that's that's the way to go, man. That's the reason I
hewi (05:53)
Yeah.
Dan (05:53)
got into foiling, just to be able to get in the water every day. regardless of the conditions, if it's ten knots or thirty knots, you have something to do.
hewi (06:02)
For sure.
Dan (06:05)
dude, so how like before we get into we have we have a slideshow presentation, like we're gonna go very technical into downwinding and just the science behind it. But tell me just a little bit about like how did you learn all this stuff? Because this is not normal, okay? This is like definitely 10 steps beyond what I've seen anywhere. So how did you get to this knowledge?
hewi (06:33)
Cool, cool. I guess it started kind of with college. So I was in high school, I saw my P teacher and surf coach and I like, you know what? He's got a pretty cool job. I wanna be like him. and I was always decent at math, never great. And the advisors were like, Okay, go get a bachelor's in math and then you can be a teacher, surf teach surf team and all that stuff. And that was cool. So then in college, there was some math, and then I got this book by Surfline and
It was almost it's almost as corny as the dream actually, where there was one day I was walking up the point of steamer lane and I just saw like a wave turn and bend, refract. And I c I kinda just got like this like, holy shit, like I I'm studying math, like I should know this, you know what I mean? Like I
Dan (07:20)
Mm.
hewi (07:20)
should study this, I should be able to explain this. And I had surfer lingo for it, but that was the hook, and so I got the surfline book. The surfline book taught me the basics.
And then one thing led to the other, and then I was at a great opportunity to get a master's, partially so I could teach community college instead of just high school. And the masters, you know, you do a specialization usually. And I was able to team up with my advisor who was like a numerical mathematician, so pretty much like how like code waves into the computer. And yeah, did a decent little thesis on like waves. Not nothing crazy at all. Nobody yeah.
Didn't save the world or anything. And yeah, just for just for hobby. Just for hobby. I just always have books open, always read, always ask questions like what is causing that? And then there's so much literature out there.
Dan (08:11)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (08:12)
it's niche, but there's a lot of literature out there you can find that, you know, has all these answers.
Dan (08:17)
Yeah, look, I I think this is going to be extremely eye-opening for a lot of people because you know the I think the big the hardest thing in downwinding is really when you look at the surface of the water, what is happening there. You know, at the start everything is very foreign. You really don't know how to decipher little things that you're looking at. But as you gain that experience, and it's only with water time.
you get to the point where you know how to not only like see what where to go, but like feel the rhythm of the ocean, which is so freaking cool, right? So I wanna help people in this downwinding journey. And I guess the good starting point for us is to like understand just how waves are formed from the very first principle, like how are waves, you know, how do waves begin really and
And then we go from there, I guess.
hewi (09:18)
Cool, cool. Do you do you want me to just wing it like this or do you wanna revert to the sides?
Dan (09:25)
dude, look, we you have slides. Let's use the slides. I think I I
hewi (09:27)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, okay, cool.
Dan (09:29)
I really enjoy the math behind everything
hewi (09:32)
Yeah.
Dan (09:33)
and I think people will, you know, appreciate this as well. But we'll
hewi (09:37)
Okay.
Dan (09:37)
get very practical. Like we'll show the theory, but let's get practical.
hewi (09:42)
Okay, cool. I think it's showing how's that look?
Dan (09:46)
Yeah, I can see it. That's cool.
hewi (09:48)
Okay, sweet. Yeah, no, if it was any other podcast, probably just talk about it, but hydroflores are such nerds. I know I know like ninety percent of the people are gonna wanna see the equations and stuff. So yeah,
Dan (09:59)
yeah, yeah.
hewi (10:02)
so this is a a presentation I modified for this podcast, but I also have it on my YouTube channel. and yeah, it's just basically called Ocean Waves and there's a lot of good stuff in it. So before we even really get going.
here's that surfline book I was talking about. If if you're interested in this kind of stuff at all, this book has everything from the beginner you know point of view you need to know. Here's a website I recommend. it's kind of more medium, plot more math, but still easy to understand. And then this is like this is the holy grail. This is like the Bible to to me and many coastal engineers. This has everything you need to know with lots and lots of math. So yeah, there's some resources.
And yeah, getting into why waves move forward, propagation, restoring force. So restoring force is returning the displaced water to where it was. And in ocean waves, it's gravitation, gravity, and it's not surface tension. So a lot of people think, you know, capillary waves are wind waves, blah, blah, blah. But really, capillary waves are wavelengths of a few centimeters. And we're we're not really writing those. So propagation is
due to gravitation. and then just if you've never thought about from like a maths first principle, a sine wave, cosine wave, really do a really good job at modeling these waves. So here at the top you have I won't I won't read it all because we don't need to get into it, but
Dan (11:32)
Ha ha.
hewi (11:34)
you know some inputs. And a funny story is that after I graduated I got the wave equation tattooed on myself. And
Dan (11:41)
You
did not.
hewi (11:43)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so here's the funny part. Th like rigorous like mathematics use U, but like ocean waves use Ada. And I have the U tattooed on me, so it's like a little sad.
Dan (11:54)
Okay.
hewi (11:57)
Yeah.
Dan (11:59)
Was that intentional?
hewi (12:03)
no, I kinda just didn't know any better. All my thesis was written with the U. Yeah, but anyway, here here's just a classic
equation for a wave and down here below you can see all the parameters of it amplitude period wavelength which we'll get into a little bit more on the next few slides okay and if there's like one thing you need to remember from this podcast it's probably this side and the idea is linearity you can add things together so we have two waves the red and the blue one and
They're moving at a little different speed, so the red's moving a little bit faster, blue's little slower. So you when you add them together, you get this new green shape. And maybe you can see like when they come into phase, like right there. That's where the green's tallest. And when they're not out of phase, like right here, zero, it's zero at the bottom. So therefore you have a new wave.
Dan (13:05)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (13:06)
and this is just, you know, base theory with two waves. In the ocean, there ain't no limit.
There's all these waves added together all the time in all different directions.
Dan (13:17)
And this is part of the the chaos that we are looking at, right? Those you know, we we see we're people think, I'm gonna be on a wave, you know, catch a wave for thirty kilometers, but it's far from that.
hewi (13:27)
Mm-hmm, huh.
Dan (13:28)
We'll be we'll be on a wave for
hewi (13:31)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (13:32)
what three seconds, five seconds, ten
hewi (13:34)
Exactly.
Dan (13:35)
at the most. So just that decision making of what to do, you can really see
hewi (13:41)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (13:42)
on that green line that
you have to be very dynamic in your decision making because it's not gonna be there for you. You know, that energy is not gonna be there for you for too long.
hewi (13:54)
Nope, nope, absolutely not. Yeah, and that that not that energy not being there for you is known as group velocity and phase velocity.
Cool. So this green is representing the group velocity and this red is representing the phase velocity. in deep water you're gonna have the red move twice the speed of the green. And the green is basically like the speed of the packet itself, while the red is the single wave shooting through it. So if you're you know out on a really fast run, you're gonna have like that feeling where fast waves are going below you and you're gonna turn back on the one onto it and
Dan (14:33)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (14:34)
then turn back on the one onto it.
And then the whole entire packet itself is gonna pass you up. So the phase is the quick one going under you. The green is the whole entire group as itself moving at a different speed, which is half the phase speed.
Dan (14:47)
So when you say packet are you would it would do people refer to that as like a set?
hewi (14:55)
Yeah, so surfers would call that a set. other people might call it a wave train.
Dan (15:02)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (15:03)
yeah, yeah, a set, basically a set of waves. And down here at the bottom I have deep water and shallow water scenarios. So the shallow water is kinda like what surfers are more used to, the set, where each wave is there and it kind of maintains its position and arrives on time. While in deep water, it's still a set.
But they're not maintaining their position. It's dispersive. The wave is dispersive.
Dan (15:29)
Okay.
And is that just due to the the depth of the ro water really? So when you get in shallow water that that wave will gain amplitude, lose speed and then break, and then that's why they kind of stay together a little more?
hewi (15:45)
Bingo, yeah, yeah. Once you get to that deep water, the phase speed will slow down and match the the group V's, the group speed.
Dan (15:53)
Yeah, right.
hewi (15:54)
Yeah.
Dan (15:55)
So
hewi (15:55)
So
Dan (15:56)
in this animation,
hewi (15:58)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (15:59)
the red would be that th maybe what I call a groundswell that I want to try to hang on to or is that not exactly right?
hewi (16:12)
So the green would be so how about this? In between these two greens itself,
Dan (16:18)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (16:19)
that's a single wave, that's kind of like the group speed. And then
Dan (16:22)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (16:23)
in between it are the individual ra waves. So maybe if you track my cursor, it's high, I turn back, it's high, I turn back, it's high, I turn back, it's high, I turn back. And then before you know it, the green is past you and you're on to the next set behind it. And as you know in in the ocean, it's not always the same root.
reproducible packet. The
Dan (16:43)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (16:44)
one behind it has a different shape, it has a different angle, direction.
Dan (16:48)
Yes, angle. Interesting too to talk about that. Dude, this is great. I love this so
hewi (16:52)
Yeah. Alright, cool.
Dan (16:56)
much.
hewi (16:56)
So here's some math. not too much to go over, but here's a speed in deep water. And here's our speed in shallow water. that's gravitate gravity times the depth. and what we should really note here is
Wave slows in, you know, shallow water, the wavelength decreases as you stated, and here's the
Dan (17:19)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (17:19)
gotcha. The period stays the same because remember C equals length divided by time, the speed equals distance divided by time. So the period is gonna remain the same when you slow the wave and decrease the wavelength.
Dan (17:35)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (17:36)
Yeah. Okay. here's just a fun little you know, way to think about it. We got looking from a bird's eye view, some windswell traveling towards the northeast. this distance right here is kind of like what we're calling the crest, the top of the wave,
Dan (17:54)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (17:54)
and see how short it is compared to a long period group. So not only is the long period group more distance this way, but it's also got a longer crest generally.
And when you add together, you know, they lie on top of each other, and this is what you'd see from above.
Dan (18:13)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (18:16)
Okay, so this is probably the second most important like piece of the slide. And here's the five four slash five waves, a shallow water wave will will change. shoaling, deshoaling, refraction, diffraction, and reflection. I have animations and pictures on the following slides.
Dan (18:38)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (18:39)
I don't wanna, you know, read this out here unless you have any questions on this slide that are like not obvious.
Dan (18:45)
I don't have any
questions, but I think people mix up a lot refraction and reflection. And I think sometimes they
hewi (18:52)
Mm.
Dan (18:53)
say refraction meaning reflection. So those two I think are quite interesting to get into. shoaling, I have no idea what it is. Neither do neither deshooling. So let's
hewi (19:02)
Hmm.
Dan (19:05)
let's learn a little bit.
hewi (19:07)
Okay, cool. Yeah, good good observation. You're right. Refraction and reflection are often confused. So
let's start off with shoaling. here's a picture of a point break, probably a really big swell. And the way we're gonna show shoaling here is along my cursor, here's one wave crest, here's another wave crest. This is deep water out here. This is shallower water in here, right? So as we check out this more shallow water, from this wave.
Crest to this wave crest, we see the wavelength here versus here has decreased. The other thing we see is that along this crest, this height of the wave has increased as it comes closer to shore. You know, you compare this, or even out here to here, to here, to here, the wave's getting bigger. So shoaling, as we had on the last slide, it slows the wave down and the wavelength decreases, all that energy gets forced upwards. So that's a
Pretty cool picture of shoaling. De shoaling is kind of a controversial one, but it's so important to hydrofoilers. There's some literature on it, and it's basically the reverse. Instead of going from deep water to shallow water, you go from shallow water to deep water. So right here you see a wave that kind of was breaking. And right over here is deep water. And I did my best to find an example, it's not the best, but if we press play.
You see how it drops out right there.
Dan (20:36)
Yep.
hewi (20:37)
And if you've prone foiled before, you've experienced this for certain. and it's probably come with the frustration of you catching the wave, standing up on it, and then noticing all the energy either dropped out from under you or past you somehow, and that's deshooling right there.
this part right here is probably a reflection from the jetty, but
Dan (21:00)
Yeah.
hewi (21:00)
this initial wave that we watched drop out came in this way, and here's the shallow water that you can kinda see to the deep water out here.
Dan (21:08)
It's the classic shit,
I have to find something 'cause this energy just went away.
hewi (21:14)
Yep, exactly. And yeah, ev every prone foiler has has experienced this one. And that's what's so funny about, you know, beginner foiler advice they tell us to find a wave that breaks and backs off, but you really just want a wave that breaks and just barely keeps crumbling.
Dan (21:31)
Mm.
hewi (21:33)
Yeah. let's see. Next
one. Refraction. Here's a little animation I made. And
Remember refraction's always going to keep the crest parallel to the bathymetry. And in this case, this orange is going to be shallow water. This is going to be deeper water. And our wave is going to be in between these two points. So press play. Okay, there's our red wave right there.
Dan (22:03)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (22:04)
And watch what happens when it when this point reaches this shallow dividing line.
Boom, it's gonna go right there under refraction, according to Snell's law as we saw in an earlier slide. Now pay attention, this point's going slow, this point's still going fast. What's gonna
Dan (22:27)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (22:28)
happen to this distance right here of the red wave? Will it increase, decrease, or stay the same?
Dan (22:37)
increase.
hewi (22:39)
It's gonna increase, that's right. So we see it increasing.
Dan (22:41)
Yeah.
hewi (22:42)
Now they're both in the shallower water and it's going in a different direction than it started.
Dan (22:47)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (22:48)
and it's smaller than what it was. So the fun fact, refraction always makes waves smaller. and a lot of people, you know, might go, What what are you talking about? My favorite wave refracts and it always gets bigger. Well, that's kind of true too, but what's really happening there is a wave was refracted from two directions. They each became smaller.
But because they got added together, the ride the
Dan (23:12)
It's the green line that we saw first coming together.
hewi (23:14)
wave you're riding becomes larger, exactly.
Dan (23:17)
For some reason I thought that this was going to continue like in an arc, but it it turns and then goes straight. for some reason I thought it was gonna be continue to peel.
hewi (23:30)
Yeah, no, you're totally right. This is I guess this is the problem of like rigid mathematics. So I just have
Dan (23:35)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (23:36)
this straight dividing line that's totally unrealistic where everything here
Dan (23:40)
Yeah.
hewi (23:40)
is just equal depth. if we go back a couple slides in the animation, we can see
Dan (23:47)
Yeah, you can see that.
hewi (23:48)
refraction here as well. So here's the wave crest outside, and then after it goes undergoes refraction, here's the new angle. So an angle
Dan (23:57)
Totally different.
hewi (23:58)
like that.
compared to an angle like that was the refraction. And
Dan (24:03)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (24:03)
you can see how it's also lost some size from here to here. And pro analysis, look at the white water all the way on the inside. It's all come parallel to shore.
Dan (24:18)
nice.
hewi (24:19)
Yeah. So that is a this is a good picture of refraction as well. I just I just like the animation here.
Dan (24:27)
No, let's let's use the animation. I like it too.
hewi (24:30)
Alright, cool, cool. next one, which I believe is reflection. And
Dan (24:35)
Mm.
hewi (24:36)
I
hope I hope everybody sees the difference now. This really has to do with, you know, hitting a jetty, hitting a cliff, the wave piling up, releasing, make a side wave or make a backwash of some sort. So here, this is the wedge, the wave's hitting the rock. Yeah, hitting the rock,
Dan (24:48)
Wedge. Insane.
hewi (24:52)
bouncing back out. Here's the reflected wave, and
Dan (24:54)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (24:55)
it just happens to line up with another wave, and he's getting a sick picture right here.
Yeah.
Dan (25:02)
So the reflection is whenever we have like a rock formation like this or like a cliff, we have lots of cliff cliffs here on our coast. if something bounces on to that cliff and bounces back into the ocean, that's reflection, not not refraction. A lot of people call say refraction. And I'm always like, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be the,
hewi (25:23)
Yeah.
Dan (25:24)
you know, the guy says, It's not really refraction. But
hewi (25:27)
Yeah.
Dan (25:27)
we see a lot of that in a lot of spots here. and then obviously those waves will come back and join whatever you're writing and create chaos as well.
hewi (25:37)
Yeah, for sure. We got one or two spots down here and sometimes it's horrible, sometimes the angle is just right where you can write it back out to C and it makes like a triangle like this and you just
Dan (25:49)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (25:49)
go s so fast. So sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. but yeah.
Dan (25:56)
So when we add those two waves together, they're not only gonna gain
hewi (25:59)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (26:00)
amplitude, but they gain speed as well. Do you add the speed of both waves or do you combine them in some sort of way?
hewi (26:09)
that's gonna have to come down to the depth, but generally speaking, yes, they're absolutely gonna not only increase in amplitude, but also speed. I have a slide later on that. so I
Dan (26:21)
Quadruples.
hewi (26:24)
yeah, yeah, quadruples are a good are a good example of that. which yeah, we'll we'll see in a second. Yeah, yeah.
Dan (26:29)
We'll get into it. We'll get into it.
hewi (26:31)
But here here you can see it definitely got bigger. And
then diffraction, this is by far the hardest one to explain with words.
but a picture really helps. So here we have two a bunch of waves. Yeah, right.
Dan (26:41)
Maybe we do interpretive dance for this one.
hewi (26:46)
the waves are going from left to right. And this is like a jetty or a seawall of some sort. Of course there's gonna be no waves here, right? but as the wave passes, the energy, the height, whatever you want to call it, right here on the crest, spreads out laterally. So this part right here is the diffracted part.
Similar to light waves as well. we don't see this too much, but sometimes if you're in like the lee of a headland, you'll get some diffracted waves as well. And remember all of these can happen at once. Diffraction, reflection, re So it's not always just one thing, but many things keep a keep aware of.
Dan (27:27)
I love this.
hewi (27:29)
Cool.
another really important thing about foiling is the particle paths. So this is that wave we saw in the beginning. The black dot is supposed to represent a particle. Maybe think of a bird or a beach ball on the surface
Dan (27:43)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (27:43)
of the water. And notice how right here it's getting sucked to the left, getting up, going sucked to the right, but it's not really moving. The height the idea here is that the wave itself, the energy is, but the mass.
Is not moving. And we're going to use these particles as updrafts, I guess some call them. When
Dan (28:04)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (28:05)
the when we're on the face of the wave, this particle is coming up, right? Here you see it going up. So your foil is going to use that to get some extra lift out of it on top of
Dan (28:15)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (28:17)
the already downhill slope you have. And
Dan (28:20)
So
this kinda tells us in a wave where we wanna sit on it really. We don't wanna sit on a wave that is well on the backside of a wave really. We wanna be on the top, middle or top of a wave, in front of the wave.
hewi (28:38)
Exactly. You wanna be on that riding ri rising water, not the
Dan (28:41)
Mm.
hewi (28:42)
falling water. Yeah.
Dan (28:45)
So when
we so this is I love this slide because it makes it very easy for us to understand where we can search for lift, right? And there are certain moves that we'll get
hewi (28:56)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Dan (28:58)
to them as well, but when we talk about like peeling back, for example, we're going from riding one wave to then riding the downhill slope, the backside of the wave, and then
hewi (29:11)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (29:11)
going on to the front side of the back wave.
Can we still gain energy going through that backside of the wave or because it's going down, we're always gonna be losing lift and not being able to like gain speed?
hewi (29:29)
I think you're not gonna have as much as you had on the up face, but if you're going downwind, you're not doing you you're gonna cut to the right. So it's not like
Dan (29:39)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (29:41)
you're still going straight and getting past by the wave completely. You're going sideways. So although you're dropping, you're also going sideways. So you're not completely losing everything compared to just going straight.
Dan (29:57)
And even that, like even that concept of not like how often do you actually go straight on a downwind run? Very rarely we're just hanging
hewi (30:06)
Mm.
Dan (30:06)
straight downwind, right? And and this is mainly the reason why, because at some point you're gonna gain speed, you're gonna go down that face, and you're eventually gonna hit the trough and then start going uphill. And when like numerous times you get you catch yourself trying to pump up and over and you just can't
hewi (30:23)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Dan (30:25)
get through that.
swell is because you're fighting not only uphill, you know, slope, but ver
hewi (30:32)
Exactly.
Dan (30:33)
like less lift in that in that section.
hewi (30:37)
Couldn't have said it better. Thank you.
Dan (30:39)
No, I love that because when people are learning they go straight down. So I think the best thing to do is to avoid the path downwind, going straight downwind
hewi (30:48)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (30:49)
and always have a slight angle to be able to tap into energy.
hewi (30:54)
Yeah, I mean generally speaking, if you take someone who can g you know connect waves in the surf, you put them on a decent foil and just stend them at an angle downwind, like they're gonna stay up for good five minutes on their first
Dan (31:06)
They'll go. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
hewi (31:09)
their first go. As long as they don't chase and make a mistake, just go diagonal, they'll they'll figure it out.
Dan (31:14)
Totally.
hewi (31:16)
Cool. So this is basically the same thing as the last slide, but it shows deep, intermediate, and shallow water. And you've probably noticed this is a nice circle. Then the circles get smaller as it goes deeper. And then as you go to very shallow water, it's not as much of a circle anymore at the top, almost, not really. And then at the bottom, it's pretty much just side to side motion. So this this these particle paths change depending on the depth and the shape of the wave. rule of thumb.
If you see a wave that's completely vertical, moving like this, like it's about to barrel, all of those particles are going straight up. Rule of thumb, but like you can rely on that pretty heavily.
Dan (31:58)
So if we go back to that just the previous animation, I love that animation. we have energy going from like when the dot is right at the middle of the y-axis on the bottom.
hewi (32:09)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (32:10)
So all that uphill, you know, we're on the on the wave on the wave face. But we also have from let's say now, it we also have that X
movement and that's also lift and that's also energy that we're gaining.
hewi (32:31)
Yeah, I think it's gonna depend on the the the angle that you're cutting at, but
Dan (32:37)
Hm.
hewi (32:37)
have you heard of let's see, potential and kinetic energy?
Dan (32:41)
I've heard about it. If you tell me how to describe it I wouldn't
hewi (32:43)
Okay. So p
Dan (32:46)
be able to though.
hewi (32:48)
potential energy is generally like say you have water up a hill, it has, you know, an ability to go downhill, like because it's higher. So the potential energy of a wave is the elevation from zero, and then the kinetic energy is kinetic, you know, something that's moving. So
Dan (33:05)
PDM.
hewi (33:07)
yeah, those two together, the the kinetic is the moving particles, the potential is the
ris already risen waveform itself. Yeah, you can use both of them. All right.
so this is what part of what you were asking earlier when waves add together a little bit.
Dan (33:29)
Mm.
hewi (33:31)
it'll make more sense in a second, I hope. So here we have wave crests and here we have a bunch of white water, the path of the wave, and in between these two makes an angle called peel angle. And this is gonna be really important to gaining speed, whether you're surfing, downlanding, maybe sailing or whatever.
And basically what you should take away from this is a large peel angle, meaning that this angle is 90 degrees, is gonna
Dan (33:59)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (33:59)
be a straight ride, like Waikiki. A small peel angle, this angle, so imagine it's shorter, the white wash is just going right along this crest. That's gonna be a really fast wave. I guess snapper rocks kind of does it, right? It's kind of like a foam ball, really racy.
Dan (34:16)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (34:17)
that's peel angle. I have another slide.
And this is kind of the math behind how you can how you could use it. So here we have two waves from a bird's eye view, wave crest, wavecrest. We're just gonna say it's they're ten seconds apart. So speed is a distance divided by a time, right? Here's our
Dan (34:38)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (34:38)
distance right here between the waves. And in ten seconds, you will have gone from here to here. However, if you go from here to here, just visually without any math proofs.
This is longer than this, right? But this wave was the speed that like you're limited by in the y direction. So in ten seconds you've gone extra length. Since you've gone extra length in the same amount of time, you have increased your speed.
Dan (35:10)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (35:11)
and this is a really good trick if you're trying to like break your fastest KMs when you're out on a day that's like a medium period or maybe even
Maybe even long period in the right conditions. turn on that bump and just pump sideways as hard as you can on that long period bump, and you will drop 10 seconds off your fastest kilometer, without a doubt.
Dan (35:33)
Mm. It makes sense.
hewi (35:36)
yeah, I it's been so much fun downwinding for me lately because I got like, you know, the hot new F4 gear and
Dan (35:43)
yeah.
hewi (35:44)
I could never really break two kilometers.
And then I got on the six eighty five first time on it. sorry, two minute kilometers. I got on the six eighty five and then I broke it, just barely broke it. And then I got the hammerhead and then I like totally broke it to like one fifty. And then I did this trick and I got a one forty five and I've never been good at downwinding like speed wise.
Dan (36:07)
Fast.
hewi (36:08)
But like I'm getting one forty five with a good foil and this trick right here. So yeah, try it on your next
Dan (36:14)
That's really cool.
hewi (36:16)
run.
Dan (36:17)
Yeah.
hewi (36:17)
Yeah.
Dan (36:18)
look this and and it'll work both in the bay, because I have bay conditions which are super groomed, and then I have open ocean swell conditions as well. I think this I would benefit a lot from this in open ocean in those longer periods. That makes sense.
hewi (36:36)
Totally.
Yeah, depends on the foil, your approach, blah blah blah. And then I I
Dan (36:40)
How how
fast are you going on like a one forty five minute per kilometer? Just so people understand like how fast you're going, like an average speed for that K?
hewi (36:52)
shoot, I think I we should convert it, but I think two minute kilometer is about eighteen miles an hour. Yeah, so I'll I'll let you do some crunch in there if you'd like to share that.
Dan (37:05)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (37:09)
yeah, which is pretty fast. Pretty fast.
Dan (37:12)
It's fast and people don't like so that's like close to thirty Ks, thirty kilometers an hour. riding
hewi (37:19)
Wow.
Dan (37:19)
at th yeah, it's fast. Like riding at thirty Ks for a sustained period of time is very uncomfortable sometimes 'cause it's fast. It's fast.
hewi (37:28)
Can be. Yeah.
Dan (37:30)
So man, like you you see people to j to give, you know, an idea when people are doing a a minute and thirty in to O for forty kilometers, like that is
freaking flying for such a long time. And you know,
hewi (37:45)
It's crazy.
Dan (37:47)
the flow and just your like your mental state in a run like that. you really have to not only be super physically fit, but mentally fit because it's it's uneasy
hewi (37:59)
Mm.
Dan (37:59)
man to to ride that fast for that long.
hewi (38:02)
Yeah, but this actually brings up another fun math, physics concept, theory of relativity. Maybe heard of it? So basically,
Dan (38:10)
I heard of it.
hewi (38:13)
if your foil is matched perfectly to the bumps, you're actually not gonna feel like you're going that fast. So let's use some really crazy examples. I used to ride the Lift 170 and in California bumps, I swore I was breaking the speed of sound because
That was a slow foil and it wouldn't really let me push through these bumps. So I was like going over the top of them, sometimes getting ejected, and
Dan (38:39)
Mm.
hewi (38:40)
you know, the it couldn't really keep up. So the speed, the contrast, the slope I was on made it feel really fast. But now that I'm on faster bumps and I'm traveling with one wave,
Dan (38:51)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (38:53)
it doesn't feel fast. When you're on an airplane going however many hundreds of knots, it doesn't feel that fast, right?
Dan (38:59)
Yeah. It's I like to talk about that because when we think about foil choice for a run,
hewi (39:07)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (39:07)
I always say, you know, match your foil to the energy that you're riding. But what I mean by that is I don't like to match my foil exactly to the speed of the bumps of the day. I like to recommend to for people either to be over foiled or under foiled.
If you're overfoiled,
hewi (39:25)
Mm.
Dan (39:26)
you will be able to peel back and ride slow and like you'll benefit from that and you'll have an advantage. If you have a fast foil, you'll be able, like you said, to stick with those longer swells and go fast easier than just matching it perfectly and maxing that foil out to, you know, match the speed of the bump. So a lot
hewi (39:45)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (39:46)
of people say, I'm matching the foil, but you want to be over or under. I don't know what you feel about you know about that, but that's how I think about it. I never want to be
Exactly at the same speed with the foil I'm writing.
hewi (39:59)
Yeah, no, I I dig all well performing foils. So I'll take out my big nine hundred, I'll take out my small five ten and everything in between.
Dan (40:07)
Mm.
hewi (40:09)
at the moment I'm obsessed with going fast, but I totally hear what you're saying, especially from a learning point of view, because
Dan (40:15)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (40:16)
staying with that energy, with that packet, is what you're trying to learn. So if you're a beginner to either go fast with it, you know, or slower than it, that makes sense for sure.
Dan (40:28)
Yeah, we'll talk about some downwinding techniques soon. but I still wanna continue with this technical bit and then we'll start to like talk about how to ride and what to look for and all that
hewi (40:38)
Right, right.
Dan (40:39)
stuff.
hewi (40:40)
Last thing that's also really funny about what you talk about, you know, blazing one thirty for, you know, the whole two O.
Dan (40:48)
Mm.
hewi (40:49)
when you're that pro, don't get me wrong, they have some incredibly incredible drops that you've seen on their YouTube and stuff, but when you're that pro, you're actually aiming for the trough. And
Dan (41:01)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (41:02)
basically you're moving at such a high speed that you're not really ever
dropping in as much, you're just always kind of like on the face of the wave at a similar slope. So if you go to Hood River at the hatch, which has very slow bumps, you'll go down a bump so fast and you know you you you think you're gonna die. But in
Dan (41:23)
Ha ha ha.
hewi (41:24)
the ocean it'll be more spread out and you can just find a nice spot to park yourself and you don't ever have to really take those big drops as often.
Dan (41:32)
And I like it's cool that you mentioned that because a lot of the beginner mistakes come from dropping down. And if you look at like the the graph of speed of someone who's really pro, it'll be very like an average speed. And someone who's learning will have high speed and low speed all the time and they'll kind of be fighting the rhythm and trying to find their position a little more. But when someone rides to the point where they're maximizing conditions, I feel like they're
average speed is very like has a very small amplitude.
hewi (42:06)
For sure, for sure.
Dan (42:07)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (42:07)
I have a fun simulation on that later too. But yeah.
Dan (42:11)
Ooh, look at you back.
hewi (42:13)
Let's move on. and of course I was a math teacher, so I had to include my forty-five, forty-five, ninety triangle because again, if this is like the straight line and this is the angle, it's that times the square root of true two. And
Dan (42:25)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (42:26)
imagine if you could really just shoot out like so far sideways down this, you'd increase your length more and therefore your speed.
Okay. this was
about kind of buoys and basically buoys are these things that float and then tell us a bunch of good stuff. We don't need to go through this slide too much. but here we should pay a little bit of attention. so here's an output from the buoy, and here's the sample time and the vertical time. So you know, we're below the mean water, it's negative. We're above the mean water line, it's positive. And with this data right here and this time, you can do a fast Fourier transform.
Transform. you can do it in Excel. It's kind of fun. Really good, you know, exercise to do
Dan (43:10)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (43:10)
if you're into that kind of stuff. And you get this plot. And this plot, I already see a lot of downwinders starting to use this. maybe you've seen someone in Australia use one.
Dan (43:24)
I haven't I wanna understand this a little bit better.
hewi (43:25)
No.
Okay, yeah, so some of the North Sea guys, a lot of the California guys are using it. And simply put, consider this energy or wave height. It's got really weird units that do ultimately make sense, but don't worry about them too much. Y-axis there, x-axis here is frequency, and on the top is period. And this will tell you where your energy lies. So visually, on this plot, we see a peak.
Around ten or eleven seconds. Tapers off going down to I don't know, seven seconds over here. And yeah, that's the energy. We'll go through some more examples in a second, but it it this really helps you visualize at what period is energy and in what relationship to the other swells. And other plots even have a two-dimensional spectrum, so it'll show the direction the swell's coming from because swells aren't always lined up together, right?
Dan (44:23)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (44:25)
Yeah. here's some heavy math, but this is like the most beautiful slide out of everything. If you're a math person, the the author of that ocean book from the beginning defines this as the most important equation in his whole entire book. And I'm absolutely on on par with him. here's a fun one right here. Significant wave height, here's an equation for that, main wave period equation for that.
Fun fact, in a thirty minute window, your largest wave is approximately twice the size of H sig. So if your buoy is say four feet at eight seconds, in thirty minutes at that buoy, there's probably gonna be an eight foot wave that comes through.
Dan (45:10)
Hmm. Is is that always in that time frame or would that time frame change?
hewi (45:17)
Again, it's a rule of thumb and that's a rule
Dan (45:19)
Yeah.
hewi (45:19)
of thumb from that book. So I trust it. And personally, I feel like I've seen that happen as well. You
Dan (45:26)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (45:27)
know, like within half an hour, like you're definitely gonna get one bomb that just comes through.
Dan (45:31)
Bomb. Yeah.
hewi (45:32)
Yeah. But maybe it depends where you are. But overall I I've noticed it in California.
and then yeah, I just got a bunch of examples with this variance density spectrum that I hope will make people feel more comfortable identifying.
so divide the screen like in the left and to right and on the left we have this narrow spectrum here, a peak around fifteen seconds, and you're gonna expect regular shaped long crested. So we have one wave after another spaced out about the same from each other, about and you have these long crests, long crests, long crests. Come over here. We have the spectrum, a peak in the spectrum at I don't know, 17. Kinda narrow, so it's kinda like this one, but
Look at all this other energy that we have. I see a peak right here. Let's let's do a practice with you on the spot. What do you identify this peak as? How many seconds?
Dan (46:30)
Twelve.
hewi (46:32)
Where my cursor is?
Dan (46:34)
Where is your cursor?
hewi (46:36)
So we've got five here and ten here. Five seconds and ten seconds.
Dan (46:41)
sorry, I'm
looking at the bottom one. Yeah, so let's
hewi (46:44)
My bad.
Dan (46:44)
say seven seconds, six seconds.
hewi (46:47)
Yeah, somewhere through there. So we know there's already shorter period and then look at this width. So there's a significant amount of energy from ten seconds all the way down to I don't know, maybe five seconds. And when you have that width, you're gonna expect more irregular shaped and short crested. So here in this picture, you can't really
Dan (47:09)
Mm.
hewi (47:09)
identify one way from the other, and you can't really find one long crest.
Dan (47:16)
So how okay, so I I I think I'm understanding where you're going with these graphs because if I were to then look at the graph on the right, if I'm reading that graph because there's a couple of peaks and the peaks are there's there's a distance between the peaks as well, it means that
hewi (47:35)
Broad, yes.
Dan (47:36)
swell will be erratic. It'll be coming from every other direction. w how how can we
Can we understand well, we're we're gonna know where the swell is coming from as well in a in like directionally, or it's just gonna be telling us it's gonna be messy?
hewi (47:53)
Yeah, so that's gonna depend on the buoy and you know whoever is hosting that data. I have a couple examples from C Dip, who does a really
Dan (48:00)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (48:01)
good job actually at plotting the variance density spectrum with direction. but generally the shorter the period by nature is going to have multi-directions to it and it's gonna have this more crossed up shape, even if it is close in direction. And these long period swells are generally coming from a more long distance away. So they've been able to
align themselves and a arrive
Dan (48:24)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (48:25)
at a similar direction.
Dan (48:29)
So you look at those two graphs, right? On
hewi (48:32)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (48:32)
any particular day, if you look at the one on the left, how are you thinking about your run and potentially like the gear that you're gonna use?
hewi (48:42)
This day might be a surf day. This might be a surf day. Yeah.
Dan (48:45)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (48:46)
I see a lot of good surfing wave action there. I think fifteen seconds for most location would be too long to downwind.
Dan (48:55)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (48:56)
so I'm thinking long drawn out crests that I'm gonna try to be racing if I'm on foil, coming down a point break maybe. I'm thinking big waves spaced out far apart, so beach breaks could be hell getting in and out of if you got a heavy
Dan (49:09)
Yeah.
hewi (49:10)
shore break. Yeah.
Dan (49:13)
And then the example on the l right.
hewi (49:16)
Hmm. yeah.
Dan (49:17)
How would you read that one?
hewi (49:19)
So if there's this chunk right here, I know there's a bunch of windswell in the water. I could probably downwind. if I'm surfing, maybe because it's, you know, shorter period by nature, I know the the beach breaks would be more crossed up. That might be good for surfing. also for foiling. These because the spectrum's so broad, there's generally more consistency recurring waves. So your shore
Dan (49:42)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (49:43)
break getting in and out can also be
a total mess getting in out of out. So on on this side you got the big one wave every once in a while that's really gonna thump you, but you can probably time it. And on this side you're just gonna get beating, beating, beating, but probably not as big of a beating.
Dan (49:58)
Yeah, I would
probably want to observe and get out on the one on the left. I hate those breaks where it's just one after the other short period and you're just getting hammered.
hewi (50:07)
It can be bad, yeah.
For sure.
Dan (50:11)
but that's
cool. So you would you would look at the one on the right, say, look, this this is gonna be a day if that that if I'm downwinding, I will be able to find energy more easily than on the one
hewi (50:22)
Definitely.
Dan (50:22)
on the right, just because the one on the right's too spaced out, you'd like the troughs would be too big or just tough to navigate.
hewi (50:27)
Yeah.
Okay, so here is an evolution of a spectrum example. basically I found a day where the wind came up in the afternoon and as we play the video, it's gonna be like each time step and we're gonna see how the energy down here in the five to two point five second region grows and dies and
Blah blah blah blah blah.
Dan (51:43)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (51:45)
here's the wind conditions. So 20 knots between noon and 2 p.m. California time. So there's already a long period swell here. That nice narrow peak as we see. Barely any energy down here, but maybe a little bit. As we press play, the wind starts, boom, we see this energy starting to rise. Not only do we see it see
Dan (52:07)
yeah.
hewi (52:07)
it rise, but we see it starting to grow sideways in each direction, right?
Dan (52:12)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (52:12)
So it's
becoming more broad and then the wind's over and it's kind of, you know, returning to its initial state. Those bumps are starting to disappear. I'll play it one more time.
Dan (52:27)
So if I look at a graph that shows me this, I wanna talk also about like fetch and the time it takes for you know these bumps to form for it to be worth going downwinding anywhere. how like how long does the wind have to be blowing before we can go, all right, cool, let's go downwinding.
hewi (52:56)
Think that's just per spot. If you've been to Hood River, everybody knows the hatch on eight knots somehow works. there's some places they don't even consider going if it's 20 knots. In Santa Monica, Los Angeles, you can go when it's eight knots. Other spots up here just around the corner, you don't go unless it's twenty knots. But I think you will enjoy this. can you still see my screen?
Dan (53:19)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (53:20)
Okay, so I'm gonna go to a website called Swellbeat. This is a really fun calculator.
I don't know how accurate it is, but I think it's pretty accurate.
Dan (53:31)
Huey, you just might have
to change on the bottom of the share screen like which window you're s there you go.
hewi (53:37)
Cool. so here's the website, here's the URL, and if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, we can basically answer some of these questions you had. So hit me with
Dan (53:48)
Mm.
hewi (53:49)
your hit me with your local spot and we'll see if it compares. What's your wind
speed?
Dan (53:52)
All right, classic
classic example of like a summer day would be, you know, it's pretty pretty mild conditions, like no wind.
hewi (54:00)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (54:01)
And let's say at two o'clock it starts to pick up and it starts blowing a beautiful sea breeze, like twenty knots.
hewi (54:10)
Love it. And it goes for two to three hours.
Dan (54:14)
Yeah, even more, but yeah, it'll it'll blow until
hewi (54:16)
Okay.
Dan (54:17)
maybe like seven o'clock.
hewi (54:20)
So we'll do four hours and then the fetch if it's a sea breeze that's probably like a local wind. I don't know, kilometers wise, I'll give it eighty kilometers maybe.
Dan (54:33)
Give so our bay from top to bottom is around fifty kilometers. So yeah.
hewi (54:39)
Okay.
Cool. Hit calculate. one meter, exactly, so three point two eight feet, peak wave period of four point four s seconds. That's a really typical downwind spectrum right there.
Dan (54:55)
So would
that mean that also we would have a height of two meters in that thirty minute period? We could see a two meter wave.
hewi (55:07)
By the rule of thumb, you should expect a single two meter wave, yes.
Dan (55:13)
A little balmy. Nice. I'll search for it out
hewi (55:14)
Yeah, a little bomby.
Dan (55:16)
there.
hewi (55:17)
Yeah. So yeah, this is a really cool
Dan (55:19)
That's cool.
hewi (55:20)
website. we could do some more if you'd like. And up to the top there's like another one, like let's let's put in two meter wave, ten second period, and fifty meters of depth. And you can, you know,
Dan (55:33)
Mm.
hewi (55:33)
tell the wavelength, how fast the phase speed is, the group speed, and these
Dan (55:41)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (55:41)
orbits right here, the max
horizontal and vertical velocities. And as we change the wavelength, you know, to be less jeez. To be less, what's gonna happen to this wavelength? Change the water depth to something less, what's gonna happen to the wavelength? Increase, decrease, stay the same.
Dan (56:00)
Increase
hewi (56:03)
so shoaling, we're gonna go to shower water, it's going to decrease. So one one four, going ninety eight.
Dan (56:15)
Why? I thought that was gonna increase if it was shallower.
hewi (56:19)
wavelength, not wave height. So the distance between the two waves. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then let's see, if you go to like two hundred,
Dan (56:21)
wavelength. Of course. Yes, yes. Okay. So icause
hewi (56:28)
it gets longer, yeah.
Dan (56:30)
Yeah. 'Cause I want people to do this like in their local spot and understand like how much fetch do you need for the waves to be, you know, rideable. and I think like you said, it's it's spot dependent, but if there is nothing like a bay where, you know, there's a start and end point and they're just like an open ocean, they would just calculate like where the how far the wind's coming from.
hewi (56:59)
I'd say five miles, twenty knots, two hours, you could ride a fifteen hundred square centimeter foil anywhere in the world. Yeah. I'd say that's like that that's plenty in most places. You'll have little knee high bumps and they're gonna be really steep, but it'll be it'll be plenty to ride. Yeah.
Dan (57:19)
Yeah. And just for like 'cause
I'm I'm hoping that people that are just starting their downwinding journey will watch this as well. Sometimes you'll experience at the start of the run, depending on the the wave direction, we have runs that, you know, we start going offshore and we end going arriving onshore. You would have like super short period small bumps at the start, and then those bumps would develop
During the run and the conditions would change dramatically to the point where you're going to have to sacrifice either the start or the end with your foil choice. So in very short period, small bumps, what is your recommendation for how people should ride? Because it's so
hewi (58:08)
Mm.
Dan (58:08)
challenging to ride those conditions. I think it's probably the hardest conditions to actually ride.
hewi (58:13)
Yeah, if you're just trying to survive a run in like really short period, short together bumps, yeah, bigger foil, cut sideways a lot. And yeah, that's that's really it. Don't don't chase it, don't try to overtake anything, there's no point. Just
Dan (58:31)
Hmm.
hewi (58:32)
cruise it.
Dan (58:33)
Yeah, and I think when you go like you think about those angles that you showed us, you want to really be on a short angle so you maximize your speed and keep momentum rather than going straight downwind and like running into an uphill, a very small uphill, but it's an uphill that will slow you down.
hewi (58:54)
Exactly.
Dan (58:55)
Okay, that makes sense.
hewi (58:58)
Yeah. So yeah, it changes with time.
Dan (59:00)
Sorry, we deviated a little bit.
hewi (59:02)
No, no, you're good. and then let's see, I got my gosh. Here we go. So here's the Malico spectrum from the C dip. Here's the URL at
Dan (59:12)
Mm.
hewi (59:13)
top if you'd like to type it in. And now we have direction as well. In red we have direction. So most of it's, you know, trade from the ninety degree, and then over here we have I guess some kind of ground swell from the northwest.
and yeah, so here we have a peak of nine eight seconds, kind of broad, and as
Dan (59:32)
Hm.
hewi (59:33)
we know Maliko is a very fast run. So with the peak at nine seconds, we're gonna expect Kane and Guido and all these top guys to do one thirty kilometers, which is just ridiculous.
Dan (59:44)
Have you done that run?
Have you been to Hawaii? Maui?
hewi (59:47)
No,
not yet. I've been to Oahu a couple of times and that was before SUP Foiling take off took off. So
Dan (59:53)
Yeah.
hewi (59:53)
we were just like prone paddling Kaikos, which was so fun. That like on
Dan (59:57)
That's cool.
hewi (59:58)
one hand it's kinda like that is like that is downwinding, you know, the the old school
Dan (1:00:03)
Yeah.
hewi (1:00:04)
Voyager, like, holy shit, you made like Kaikos, like sending three
Dan (1:00:08)
That's so cool.
hewi (1:00:09)
miles was like something that was big and hard to do. Like, that was so fun. but I'd love to.
Dan (1:00:13)
That is and how
how long ago was that?
hewi (1:00:17)
I don't know, twenty twenty one maybe or something like that. Yeah, lift one twenty times, the good old days.
Dan (1:00:24)
One
twenty, fuck, that was such a good foil. Everybody needed to be on that.
hewi (1:00:27)
yeah.
So good. and then I have let's see, just one more spot. Santa Monica Bay. So this is where Paddle Malibu was last weekend. And as you can see, this was like during the race
so this tells you there's a narrow spectrum at nineteen, twenty seconds or eighteen seconds, whatever it was. So there's gonna be some moments where you can kind of grab onto those and go fast, but
Dan (1:00:51)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:00:52)
really the energy was through here. This six second bump down here, this five and four second down to three second. This is what we were riding for the race, and this occasionally came through. So this was a very, very slow bay run.
Dan (1:01:07)
Geez. So you'd be on big foils, you just want to maximize stay on whatever you could find.
hewi (1:01:14)
Exactly. Yeah. I rode the six eighty eight hammerhead and it actually
Dan (1:01:18)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:01:18)
went really well. and this this ground swell I could use it every once in a while and that's actually how I got I passed and got into fifth place. I walked
Dan (1:01:27)
Ooh.
hewi (1:01:28)
into groundswell and just oof, just made a lot of s what a t lotta distance. Yeah.
Dan (1:01:32)
Nice. Who won that race?
hewi (1:01:35)
Guido. It was between
Dan (1:01:36)
Gero.
hewi (1:01:37)
Guido and Tibby. And yeah,
Dan (1:01:39)
Yeah.
hewi (1:01:39)
so cool to have top guys, you know, come to your home.
Home zone, show you up, but you know, it it's fun.
Dan (1:01:46)
Tibby's
a hammer, man. He's fucking beast.
hewi (1:01:50)
It's insane. It's insane. So so cool. So happy they came. yeah, so those were my spectrum examples. I I hope they made sense where you you know I
Dan (1:02:00)
They are making more
sense now. Like this is the first time I'm kind of trying to understand this and I think I need to see more of it and maybe also see it and experience it to kind of fully grasp it. But I think now I'm starting to understand a little bit more. I was just focused on periods and
hewi (1:02:18)
Right.
Dan (1:02:18)
you need to kind of understand and and read into it a little bit more than just a period here, I reckon.
hewi (1:02:24)
Yeah, there's Surfline I love Surfline because they really tried to make this well known that there's not just a single swell of a single period and direction. There's all this other energy around it. Sometimes goes the same direction, sometimes not. And you really just gotta get used to looking at it, familiarizing
Dan (1:02:41)
Yeah.
hewi (1:02:41)
yourself with it, feeling it, and you'll you'll be able to analyze these spectrums pretty well.
Yeah, so this is where we where we deviated. and this
Dan (1:02:52)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:02:53)
is I guess where things are gonna get a little more complicated. So if you're if your brain hurts, turn it off, come back an hour, a week or two later. and
Dan (1:03:02)
Time for a second coffee.
hewi (1:03:05)
if yeah, if this gets too annoying or sticking my nerd voice, well cut me off I guess. So
Dan (1:03:10)
Mm. Mm mm. I'm digging this man. I'm on my second coffee.
hewi (1:03:15)
yummy, yummy. I should've had one.
so this is an easy slide actually. So swell generation, it's basically just wind blows. you're gonna have high pressure on the back side of the wave, low pressure on the front side of the wave. You want to measure like 10 meters above the sea level because at sea level things aren't you know too easy to measure, and this is like the the standard for wave models, blah blah blah blah blah. this slide though, I guess is very important. So this line right here.
Is zero degrees and this would be like dead downwind. So say we're blowing dead downwind, and then you're gonna have a peak frequency. The energy is going to be distributed mostly dead downwind and then a little bit off to the side, it's gonna taper off pretty dramatically, right? But then when it's windy at twice the peak frequency and three times the peak frequency, we don't see as much of the energy downwind, still some of it.
But we see it spread out equally
Dan (1:04:19)
Mm.
hewi (1:04:21)
to an angle, and even more when there's higher frequency or shorter period, you have less dead downwind and more off to an angle.
So you have a ten second
Dan (1:04:36)
I need to hear that again.
hewi (1:04:38)
all right, I'll throw some numbers. So here you have a ten second peak swell. Most the energy is going straight downwind but a little bit sideways. Then at twice that frequency or half the period, you're gonna have
At that five second, you're gonna have some energy going dead downwind, but also an equal amount going off like to 45 degrees on each side or so. So you're gonna
Dan (1:05:08)
Interesting.
hewi (1:05:09)
have so you're gonna have five second swell traveling forty-five that way, five second swell traveling dead downwind, five seconds degree swell heading that way forty-five degrees. Well up here, you pretty much just have ten second swell heading dead downwind, with it gradually tapering off as you go this way.
And then three times peak frequency, you know, even shorter period would be almost nothing downwind and almost everything sideways.
Dan (1:05:34)
So w so so how how do we translate this into like
How how what are we looking at when we're going downwind on a day with peak frequency? How what is a day with peak frequency look like?
hewi (1:05:51)
Hmm I think once you notice that the the wind really starts get sorry, my buddy just drove by.
Dan (1:06:00)
Yeah.
hewi (1:06:02)
once you really start seeing the wind like above twenty knots or so, you're gonna see lots of chops and you're gonna see lots of chops traveling in different direction. I think that's the best way, like you're gonna yeah, see that.
Dan (1:06:17)
So it's yeah, 'cause I mean
when no but it's it's yeah, it's interesting to talk about it because when we were going down wind, like if everything was perfect, the waves would just be like super groomed and one behind one after the other. But
hewi (1:06:29)
Yeah.
Dan (1:06:29)
it doesn't happen that way. So it's just that the swell when swell generates, it generates in different angles depending on the frequency.
hewi (1:06:40)
Exactly. That that shorter chop is gonna start to go off to the sideways. And we'll see that in a second because that'll make quadruput wave wave interactions, which are, you know, diamonds,
Dan (1:06:51)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:06:51)
which we'll go over in a second.
Dan (1:06:53)
Okay.
hewi (1:06:55)
Yeah. Here's another pretty complicated slide. the easy stuff is that you know to make swell you're gonna need wind speed, fetch, and duration, and gravitation, but that's kind of assumed. So wind speed was like our twenty knot example before. Our fetch was the distance when blows, I think we used fifty for your bay, and the time I think we used three hours.
And
Dan (1:07:23)
Four hours. Yep.
hewi (1:07:24)
Four hours, sorry, and that made major waves. that's the easy part. I think most people actually know that. That's the easy formula. It can get a lot more complicated. So I'll I'll do the the quick, hard example. Here we go. the idea of equivalent fetch, F sub EQ. Basically in math, when things get complicated, you want to look at like limiting examples. So
Dan (1:07:49)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:07:51)
you see this cosine theta right here, that's this angle.
That'd also be this angle here. Imagine if there was like zero. So instead of coming off at an angle, it just went down here, your fetch
Dan (1:08:02)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:08:03)
would be equal to your equivalent fetch. That's easy, that's the trivial case. Now let's consider like this island over here, and we're trying to reach this down point, but this down point's like way, way, way, way, way, way, way down here. equivalent fetch is the amount of
Is the distance is the distance needed if the wind were to blow forever for a wave component to travel at that angle to that point? So in in this case, we're looking at a really, really long
Dan (1:08:37)
Mm.
hewi (1:08:38)
one down here, because that would make a really large cosine. If you need a quick trig reminder, cosine of zero equals one. So this value would be large. But if the angles
Large it would be a multiplier that would make it smaller. So therefore your equivalent fetch, which means, you know, the distance blowing forever is equivalent to that wave going way down here. And if that
Dan (1:09:09)
So
hewi (1:09:10)
broke your mind, this is really just a thing that's that's fun but useful because it it creates dimensionless fetch down here. go ahead with your question.
Dan (1:09:23)
Yeah, it it it just sparked the question like is there a so there is a distance where there is a maximum wave height to be obtained. Like there's a distance where the wave will not get bigger.
hewi (1:09:39)
That's right. I actually have it on my next slide, if I may. What do you think?
Dan (1:09:44)
Yeah.
hewi (1:09:45)
Yeah, cool. So that is what you're talking about, a fully developed sea. but
Dan (1:09:49)
Fully developed C
hewi (1:09:51)
yeah, so no more energy can be transferred to the sea. The growth of the sea stops when phase speed of the waves reach wind speed.
Dan (1:10:01)
So how long would the fetch have to be for it to be fully developed? Like I know there's it depends on a lot of things, but like it would be what,
hewi (1:10:11)
Right.
Dan (1:10:12)
five thousand, something ridiculous like that?
hewi (1:10:15)
Yeah, I this will be a really good time for examples. let's talk about these two other ideas above it. fetch limited swallow generation. This is the strict definition from that book I was talking about, which makes not much sense unless you understood equivalent fetch from the last slide. but basically you need more distance. So the time it blew forever, but no, you need more distance for the waves to become bigger. And then duration.
Dan (1:10:43)
Or more
wind.
hewi (1:10:47)
Or more wind. Yeah, yes, yes, yes, yes. That's a good catch. Yeah.
Dan (1:10:49)
Okay. Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:10:51)
Assuming the wind is like fixed.
Dan (1:10:53)
Fixed.
hewi (1:10:53)
and then duration limited. Again, here's the strict definition, but basically
Dan (1:10:58)
Mm.
hewi (1:10:58)
you need more time. And we can go back to that calculator. Are you able to see still?
Dan (1:11:05)
I can see the slides, the swell generation slide. There you go. Yep, I can see it now.
hewi (1:11:08)
darn it. Okay. Tab. Okay. And your
wave calculator. Wave generation calculator. So in your case, twenty knots, four hours, fifty kilometers, at this bottom, wave growth is limited by duration. So that means
Dan (1:11:24)
Mm.
hewi (1:11:26)
your height and your period are gonna grow if we increase the time. Let's increase the
Dan (1:11:29)
Nice.
hewi (1:11:29)
time by forty hours, or thirty-six hours to make forty hours. And boom, what do you know? We went from one meter to one point four three meters and from
Dan (1:11:37)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:11:38)
A peak period of like four point four to five point one nine. Now we're limited.
Dan (1:11:41)
And that that's common as
well for it to be blowing for like two days. And we Yeah.
hewi (1:11:46)
jeez, wow.
Dan (1:11:47)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And consistent wind blowing for two, sometimes even three days. So we would be able to use this to know then it's been blowing for two days. You don't even have to look, you know. There's gonna be it's g there's gonna be stuff to ride. Even if even if the
hewi (1:12:02)
Right, right. So if you're
Dan (1:12:03)
wind is like not that strong.
hewi (1:12:07)
Right, right. So yeah, if you're if you're twenty knots for let's see, forty hours, you're still limited by fetch, so around
working backwards here, but it'll be worth
Dan (1:12:18)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:12:19)
it. This is what you want. Ten hours,
Dan (1:12:22)
Yeah, no, I like this.
hewi (1:12:24)
six hours. Okay, so at the
Dan (1:12:27)
There we go.
hewi (1:12:27)
seven hour range, six to seven hour range, is where your the duration isn't gonna add anything more to the to the waves. In this case, with this example right here. So after
Dan (1:12:42)
Mm-hmm. You need more
fetch or more yeah.
hewi (1:12:45)
Yeah, so after six hours
you're gonna need more fetch. so we'll go back to our seventy two hour duration and we're limited by fetch. So if you increase fetch to five hundred kilometers, poof our significant wave height extremely
Dan (1:12:55)
Hm. Wow. Yeah.
hewi (1:12:57)
s period as well, and now we're fully developed C.
Dan (1:13:04)
Five hundred. All right. I th so it's not like as much as I thought if it's going to be blowing for two days. So like a storm, you would be you'd see this in storms. Like if it's storms in the sea would be fully developed seas because they have so much fetch and time.
hewi (1:13:22)
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. if
Dan (1:13:24)
Mm.
hewi (1:13:24)
it's in an ocean, you're you got a lot more region to play with. So generally not actually.
Dan (1:13:33)
All right.
hewi (1:13:33)
right here, storms, winds of fifty mile fifty-five miles an hour, that's like the definition of a storm.
Dan (1:13:39)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:13:40)
they rarely become fully developed due to lack of fetch. So the example I had was however many kilometers that is, thousand miles, fetch is needed for a wind speed of sixty-seven
miles per hour. And that's ridiculous to have that strong of wind blow over that much distance.
Dan (1:13:58)
okay, that makes sense 'cause like if you have more wind you also need more fetch for it to be fully developed. Yeah, okay.
hewi (1:14:04)
Exactly. Yeah. So they're they're always
balancing each other out.
Dan (1:14:08)
Right. Man, this is so cool.
hewi (1:14:11)
Okay. Cool, cool.
Dan (1:14:13)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:14:14)
yeah, play without calculator. A lot of the stuff you really just need examples.
Dan (1:14:18)
Yeah.
hewi (1:14:19)
and not someone just showing you slides. But with our what what did we call it? Dimensionless fetch down here. you can also use that to come up with dimensionless, significant wave height, so that's right there, and dimensionless peak period. And
This is this is kind of some advanced stuff, you don't really need to know it, but it basically goes along with the idea that like if you have a fully developed ocean versus a fully developed pond,
Dan (1:14:53)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:14:54)
there's going to be a dimensionless significant wave height of point two four and the peak period of seven point six nine. So those I guess those are just fun things. I don't know how deep we should really get into it.
Dan (1:15:08)
Yeah, that just went straight past me.
hewi (1:15:12)
Yeah. it's all relative. How about that? That's what that's what we'll end it on. And if you're curious, look that up in the book. It's some pretty fascinating stuff. And we're almost done. Yeah, yeah,
Dan (1:15:22)
Trust you.
hewi (1:15:24)
we're almost done. So if you're if your brain hurts, it's holding a little bit longer.
Dan (1:15:27)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:15:29)
so after, you know, we did all those equations with the wind speed and the fetch and all that stuff we just talked about. Now there's gonna be dispersion and quadruput wave-wave interactions.
Dispersion is gonna happen directionally. So as we saw, waves don't just go one direction, but they go multiple directions. They're gonna spread out laterally. And then also frequency dispersion. So if you drop a stone in a pond, you probably see
Dan (1:15:54)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:15:55)
one wave at first, but then after time, there's many waves and the longer waves are going faster. This is analogous to a marathon line, where at the start everybody's together, but towards the end of the run, the really fast guys arrive.
A few of them. And then there's the mid-pack, the slow pack
Dan (1:16:10)
Hm.
hewi (1:16:11)
kind of coming in. That's frequency dispersion. and then quadruplate wave-wave interactions are gonna be another one that breaks your head. pretty advanced stuff. And basically the the waves that went off at the angle, those peak frequencies we were talking about, because they went off at angles, they kind of like this and like this, and they make a diamond pattern. And that diamond
Dan (1:16:34)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:16:35)
pattern is gonna lie on top of each other.
And make new waves and resonate and move on and I hope this diagram helps. So we see this so much, yeah.
Dan (1:16:44)
We we see this a lot in the water though.
so much. Like and this is really cool because you can there's so much to like unpack here, I I reckon, because this will help you ride different spots to gain speed, different spots
hewi (1:17:02)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (1:17:02)
to pass waves. there there's so much here, man. This is good.
hewi (1:17:08)
Totally. Yeah, so I think an easy an easy thing we can touch on is diamond pattern B is really nicely displayed. So these are wave crests, this orange is moving this way, this green is moving this way. And where they interact is going to be the biggest, right? So bigger here, bigger here, bigger here, bigger here, and there's gonna be s a trough kind of in the center. So not only do you have waves going this way and this way, but you technically have a new wave going this way. And you know, you got like
more the more distance thing we were talking about earlier. So this diagonal is in this case going to move faster than the orange wave or the green wave. Yeah. And so diam
Dan (1:17:44)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That makes sense.
hewi (1:17:49)
diamond pattern A, diamond pattern A is going to be similar to B, where there's this new there's this new wave that was created. And when you overlap the two, it's kind of like the first slide we saw where we add them together.
And there's that resonance where there's a new wave
Dan (1:18:09)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:18:10)
from these two waves, which is the craziest mind bottling thing to think of. And yeah.
Dan (1:18:16)
Does does example
A look more like real life? Like a little the the angles being a little bit less, you know, ninety degrees and more like thirty degrees? Like is that more real life or not?
hewi (1:18:33)
They could, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes.
Dan (1:18:36)
I mean I and I'm talking just about like maybe windswell as well, like not factoring in ground swell.
hewi (1:18:42)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (1:18:43)
Because I think ground swell then you can probably have a much more different angle coming into the to the windswell and then but like windswell if it's kind of going at thirty degrees you would see like those flatter diamonds, let's say, in the water. If you're looking from the top down.
hewi (1:19:02)
Yeah, for sure.
For sure. Yeah again, this is this is
Dan (1:19:05)
So how do we ride this? How do we take advantage
of this on a downwind run?
hewi (1:19:11)
that's a really good question. I think I asked Jane Casey this publicly one time. because again, in theory, you wanna go from this diamond to this diamond, but
Dan (1:19:20)
Yeah.
You're not gonna be able to though. It's a big trough, isn't it?
hewi (1:19:22)
You're not r
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess you wanna like what I understood from him, because again he talks at a pretty high level, sometimes I don't understand. What I took was you wanna be on this peak right here because it's gonna be the highest. You wanna move with it, but you wanna turn off when you can and then you kind of like do like a zigzag around the diamond. That's that's what I got from his his takeaway. Sorry if I butchered that, James. How how do you approach these scenarios, spoiler rat?
Dan (1:19:52)
This this kind of makes sense what you said, because if you're on this I'll call it the double up where these w waves intersect on a blue dot, you're going to pick up speed. So I would probably like try to pick up speed, go down the face, but then ride maybe the orange line onto the next point, because you can still maintain
hewi (1:20:11)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (1:20:12)
speed. And sometimes when you're riding you also see like waves.
coming sideways between each other, but I wouldn't be able to go straight downwind to overtake it, but I can go sideways and have it catch me, like allow it to catch
hewi (1:20:30)
Exactly.
Dan (1:20:31)
me. but I I see what you're saying with the zigzag. I think that makes total sense. I don't ride for speed at all. So
hewi (1:20:40)
Yeah.
Dan (1:20:41)
as foil rat, I would be trying to stick to the diamond and maybe peel back in the orange or the red line or the green line.
and do like a cutback, you know, like that's how I ride.
hewi (1:20:54)
For sure.
Dan (1:20:55)
So I'm going for three minute kilometers rather than two minute kilometers or one and a half. Like absolutely. I try to maximize my runs with turns. So I mean that's kind of cool, like to to think about it as well, because if you're going for speed, I think you would try to stay on the lines and go forward. If you're going for
hewi (1:21:15)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (1:21:16)
turns, you can stay on the lines, but you could go back.
hewi (1:21:20)
For sure. You have a lot of directions you can go. But yeah, I just put that in there relevant to the the spectrum. So over over time, if you follow my cursor, you know you're gonna transfer the energy from the higher frequencies to the lower frequencies because of quadruple wave wave interactions. And yeah, if you're on an airplane, you look down, you see the checkerboard, that's
Dan (1:21:43)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:21:43)
probably quadruple wave wave interaction happening. So just focus and you'll figure it out one day.
Dan (1:21:49)
Yeah, man. And it's look, is
hewi (1:21:50)
Yeah.
Dan (1:21:51)
these concepts I think will really come to life when people s see them, you know, like it's it's
hewi (1:21:56)
Yeah.
Dan (1:21:56)
easy to talk about them here. And that's why downwinding is so freaking hard because it's time in the water. Like nothing will be time
hewi (1:22:04)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (1:22:04)
in the water and you have to experience it. So I mean what we're trying to do here is help you identify what to spot and then how to take advantage of it, how to ride it and timing, all those things are
Just experience and time in the water.
hewi (1:22:20)
Yeah, you you can't exp
you can't explain it one minute on a PowerPoint slide. You have to you have to live it, you have to do your research, read those books, sleep on it and yeah. So cool.
Dan (1:22:32)
Well, I
I s I still wanna talk about some writing techniques, but I want you to finish this bit first. If we're done,
hewi (1:22:42)
I
I we are on our last slide. Let's just finish it. Let's break this pain. Let's talk about breakers. Finally.
Dan (1:22:48)
yeah. The breakers.
hewi (1:22:50)
it's over. So basically there's no excite generally accepted precise definition of wave breaking. and I'd like to challenge you in the audience. Look at this wave. Is this a broken wave? What do you think? okay.
Dan (1:23:03)
Where the cursor is or or just a wave in general?
hewi (1:23:06)
You are ax asking a pro question. So yes, that's a good point.
Where the cursor is. So here, everybody's gonna say that's broken. Here, yeah, it's probably broken. Here, maybe. Here, that wave is not broken yet, right? Yeah, and then similarly here we have a bunch of white caps, and then we have a wave here, and I don't know if any of them have broken. I guess I'd say the white caps have broken.
Dan (1:23:33)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:23:34)
I don't know if this wave is broken. It's got a bunch of offshore wind that's holding it up, so
Dan (1:23:38)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:23:38)
just to you know convey the point.
What is breaking wave? H some speculation when the height divided by wavelength is point one four. My personal favorite definition is when the water particle above exceeds the particle below, and that's what cause
Dan (1:23:53)
Yeah.
hewi (1:23:53)
causes the breaking. So I I like that one. And then here's some fun names for white caps and stuff like that in deep water. In deep water we'll call them white caps, popcorn, white horses, jumping rabbits. And yeah.
Dan (1:24:07)
In Brazil
in in Brazil we call them sheep.
hewi (1:24:11)
Sheep, like like the the animal? Counting sheep.
Dan (1:24:12)
Sheep. Yeah. But we
we say carnero and we just say, there's
hewi (1:24:17)
Canero.
Dan (1:24:18)
a lot of sheep in the water today just 'cause they're like white little things in the in the horizon.
hewi (1:24:23)
Alright, I'll have to add that. I love it.
Dan (1:24:25)
Gotta add that, man. That's the Brazilian reference for ya.
hewi (1:24:28)
Thank you. Much obrigado. We yeah, we gotta
Dan (1:24:30)
Ha ha nice. Have you been to Brazil? How
do you Portuguese?
hewi (1:24:35)
I don't know, there's so much Spanish in California.
Dan (1:24:38)
yeah.
hewi (1:24:39)
I speak a little bit of Portuguese, but it's it's like ugly. It's communicable, but it's ugly. Yeah.
Dan (1:24:43)
Just just through osmosis, really.
hewi (1:24:47)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, mostly through osmosis. Yeah. So That's the end of the
slide. Thank you everyone.
Dan (1:24:56)
Man, stand innovation because this is like there's a lot to unpack, there's a lot to understand, and it might be that, you know, people will have to go through this a couple of times to I will I certainly will to like fully grasp all of these concepts. But I want to like just go through a few important moves and we can stop sharing the screen now. There we go.
hewi (1:25:17)
Whew, so much better.
Dan (1:25:20)
let's translate in this into like practical stuff.
Right. So when people are downwinding, there's a
hewi (1:25:29)
Yes.
Dan (1:25:29)
couple of moves that are worth them understanding how to do. And let's maybe go through a few of those like fundamental moves for people to learn. and I would like to know from you first, like what do you think are the the fundamental moves of downwinding? Like what are the moves that
hewi (1:25:48)
Mm.
Dan (1:25:49)
you like your go to moves?
hewi (1:25:52)
I guess let's start from the start, the pop-up. So whether you're on a paddle or a parrowing, you're gonna have to time that gus, you're gonna have to time that paddle with the slope of the wave, so you can use, you know, the wind, the speed and the slope of the wave to get you on foil and then not fall into the back of the wave in front of it, and use the peel off thing we were talking about to increase your speed and go off the other way. I guess that that's what comes to mind for me.
Dan (1:26:22)
I like that 'cause
hewi (1:26:22)
To start?
Dan (1:26:24)
starting on a paddle, very different from starting on a parawing. When you start on the paddle, you are immediately let's say, closer to the rhythm of what's happening than you are with the parawing. I think people fling themselves as fast as they can on a parawing
hewi (1:26:42)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (1:26:43)
into a wave. And what that causes you to do is to maybe overshoot it and then end in that, you know, up up hill.
slope that will not be beneficial for you at all. So I think what's your recommendation for people like that are parawing to approach their, you know, pack down and drop? Like do you match yourself to a wave? Do you go a little bit slower?
hewi (1:27:09)
Hm.
Dan (1:27:10)
Do you go a little faster still? What's what's your idea behind that?
hewi (1:27:15)
be honest, I've only done a parrowing downwind once in my life. It was
Dan (1:27:18)
What?
hewi (1:27:18)
amaz we So in California we have strong wind and then not strong wind, like from the start to end of our our runs. Like you can downwind the whole thing. It's just you couldn't pop up at the end with a parrowing. So I've
Dan (1:27:30)
Yeah, right.
hewi (1:27:31)
only done it once in Santa Cruz. And let's see, I remember just getting super powered, waiting for a bump to like kinda be faster than what I was, and
Dan (1:27:40)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:27:40)
then using that wing to just pull myself onto it.
And you know, really decreasing your apparent wind and the kite, the sail, whatever you want call it, and then just scrunching it down, getting it, you know, stored away, like just at least in your hand, and then go into your regular downwind routine. Once you find you're comfortable with the bumps, then stash it away. I guess that's I don't really yeah, I don't know. I need to practice.
Dan (1:28:01)
Yeah. No.
hewi (1:28:04)
I really need to learn the rat lab pack thing, whatever you call it. Rat bag.
Dan (1:28:07)
Yeah, look, the rat bagging. The I
I think that's that's interesting, yeah. Like I wouldn't like shoot yourself super quick into a wave. I almost like to be at the point where I'm like in the middle to the top of a bump that I know I can
hewi (1:28:23)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (1:28:24)
produce energy and then take that energy somewhere. and then when I pack the parrowing I actually do almost like a jibe. So I'll do a turn down wind where I can quickly grab it once you have it.
in your hand, like that's when you can take your time, right? This is not a breaking, well, breaking wave. That now that's tricky. It's not a wave that you're gonna be
hewi (1:28:44)
Right.
Dan (1:28:46)
it's not a wave that you're gonna be riding close to shore that has like a a quick stop. You're gonna be riding for five, ten, fifteen, twenty kilometers, whatever. So take your
hewi (1:28:55)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (1:28:55)
time with the pack down, right? The whole point of it is for you to be precise with the pack down so those moves become muscle memory. Like you build that muscle memory and it's always the same.
So that's what I recommend people to do. but what you mentioned there, like the first riding technique that I think you mentioned was the peelback.
hewi (1:29:18)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (1:29:19)
So what how do you what is the peel back? Why is that important for you to to to to hone in downwinding?
hewi (1:29:28)
think it just keeps you away from running uphill. Yeah, so if if if you just turn that angle, you're always working not uphill. Yeah.
Dan (1:29:39)
Yeah. And you're maximizing
like the the swell that is coming behind you. I think one of the things also when you're on a pairwing that you can really take advantage of is seeing those groups. Let's call it a set to the the packs. The packets. you could see them and if you're going to choose the first one or the last one of the packet to catch
We would be aiming towards the back of the pack.
Or would you go to the first one and then drop back and keep dropping back?
hewi (1:30:12)
I think it would depend if it's short versus long period, but if it's like your classic bay run, I think you're gonna want to land like kind of in the middle. So
Dan (1:30:21)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:30:21)
that'll be like the highest part of the wave group. And then you'd peel off and then the next highest wave would catch up to you. And then you'd ride that for a second.
Dan (1:30:30)
Becomes the highest.
hewi (1:30:31)
And then you look back and then that next one, the phase, would catch up to you, and you'd be on the high peak again. So I guess aim for like
The middle front and then peel back to catch the one behind
Dan (1:30:45)
Drop back.
hewi (1:30:46)
it so you may so you maintain that that middle wave.
Dan (1:30:52)
Yeah.
going up and over, I think sometimes happens by accident at first.
hewi (1:31:00)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (1:31:01)
You go down the face of a wave and then you just have to try to pump your way up. sometimes I like to go a little bit sideways, not go straight down wind. Like if you have enough speed, you'll you'll notice that you'll be able to do one or two pumps if your foil is a lot faster than the bumps that you're riding, you'll have no issues.
but if you're on that limit of the speed of the foil with the speed of the bumps you're in and you want to go up and over, I would try to chase kind of like a sideways up and over if that makes sense, rather than straight downhill and uphill. That would just be like fighting a losing battle.
hewi (1:31:41)
For sure, for sure. I think I think you just gotta choose the right uphills. so sometimes if this is like a a wave packet, see the shape of the wave with my four fingers. Sometimes
Dan (1:31:53)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:31:53)
on this down slope right here, you'll have like another little wave right here that looks like an uphill, but because
Dan (1:32:01)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:32:01)
you have the shape of this entire packet, that's a good one to overtake. So it looks like
Dan (1:32:07)
Yes.
hewi (1:32:08)
it looks like there's a little uphill, but
if you really look at just this wave, you're on a downhill. So you're gonna use this to blow through the uphill. those are my those are my favorite ones to overtake. Those are the easiest.
Dan (1:32:19)
Is that more evident like
in in the ocean than in a bay?
hewi (1:32:24)
I think with a a combined spectrum. So when you have the longer period and the shorter period, yeah. But yeah, I I I think Go ahead.
Dan (1:32:28)
Hm. Yeah. And that's also you know, go ahead, finish finish your thought.
hewi (1:32:34)
I I guess you're right though, 'cause now I'm starting to think Hood River and it's kind of just like bump after bump after bump and there's less here comes the long period, make your passes kind of thing. So yeah, I'm
Dan (1:32:46)
Do you know what Hood River feels
like? It feels like, especially when it's big, it feels like you're unescapable. Because
hewi (1:32:52)
yeah.
Dan (1:32:52)
you, you know, you have bumps everywhere, and then you have these points where the there's a big bump on the left, big bump on the right, but then you have like a little space that you can cut through and go into this new piece of energy. is that what like Dave Kalama was saying about the wormholes? Or wormholes are more you catching those cross-
those crossing swells and keeping with a a crossing swell to then get to the next one in that zigzag idea that you mentioned.
hewi (1:33:25)
So I do remember hearing him talk about wormholes on Progression Project and I didn't really understand what he meant, but I think I think he means like you shoot for a trough and
Dan (1:33:37)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:33:38)
that trough fills in behind it, right? Because where there's a trough there's gonna be a crest that propagates to it. So I I think he gave an example of like a boat wake and I I think what
he met, I think, was that like he's shooting for the boatwake trough and that's helping
Dan (1:33:56)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:33:57)
him go forward.
Dan (1:34:00)
I need to understand those wormholes a little more. Cause visually for me it's kind of when you have those moments where you see something like this and you cut through that to go into the next piece of energy. instead of
hewi (1:34:15)
Mm-hmm.
Dan (1:34:15)
trying to like force your way over it or whatever, you see an opportunity to like cut forward through a little V shape kind of wormhole.
hewi (1:34:24)
Yeah.
Dan (1:34:25)
But I don't know if that's it.
hewi (1:34:27)
Yeah, we we really need to have him define what a wormhole is, but I think we're saying the same thing. So in in this case that you're talking about, it's like you dive for that little V cross chop, but now that you're in it, you made it into that next like wave packet. You made it into the next wave packet. So you've progressed further and it's gonna pick you up and you're gonna move along and you gotta jump to the next trough, the next wormhole kind of thing.
Dan (1:34:54)
I'm gonna try to get some visuals of that, like first person visuals of a big day. I actually got that aqua drone and I got some really good footage of Hood River, but I wanna see this like in the ocean because Hood River is so groomed and so easy. I wanna find these examples in open ocean, but I wanna I understand, Huey, just a little bit about what gear you're using. You said you're on the F four stuff. What are you frothing on these days?
hewi (1:35:21)
Five ten hammerhead. I I'm just
Dan (1:35:23)
That's it.
hewi (1:35:23)
so happy with it. I won't use it on a bay run, but like pretty much anything. I I heard Edo is just only using that. shoot, am I are we allowed to say that? We're gonna have to beep it out. I heard it
Dan (1:35:37)
I think everybody knows by now.
hewi (1:35:39)
I heard a top rider is only using that that I'm really inspired by, regardless of the conditions. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna try to hold myself to that same standard. So yeah, we did like a forty miler the other day.
in like suspect conditions and just yeah, I'm really stoked on that. I have some orcas from them as well. I'd like to get the Piranha but we'll see. Money, you know.
Dan (1:36:03)
I know.
What mass are you writing from them?
hewi (1:36:06)
I got the AX, the AX seventy-five, and yeah, I definitely notice a difference on the skinny. I'm not pro at like keeping it from the surface or anything. I know
Dan (1:36:14)
Mm.
hewi (1:36:15)
that's important, but as you can tell I just like geek out on the kinematics of the waves more, so I'm I'm like I put all my chips there. I'm like I don't even care about staying high on the mass, I just want to know
Dan (1:36:26)
Yeah.
hewi (1:36:27)
where the wave's gonna propagate.
Dan (1:36:29)
Man, you would
actually like look at the ocean in a way that nobody would actually look at the ocean. You would just see lines and formulas in your head when you look and you're chasing swell. Do do you do i
hewi (1:36:40)
Literally, y that's what goes to my head, yeah.
Dan (1:36:43)
is it more analytical for you or do you f let yourself fall into like a rhythm as well and you know, just get into that flow state where you're just feeling
it and you just get in tune with the energy of the day and you just go.
hewi (1:36:57)
Flow state. you
Dan (1:36:58)
Yeah.
hewi (1:36:58)
can't have science without art and you can't have art without science. And when you mix the two you get something magical.
Dan (1:37:05)
What are the conditions that bring you that flow state the f the easier and the fastest?
hewi (1:37:11)
Oof. In Santa Barbara, those have my favorite conditions, so we'll have like thirty knots just blowing like all night up the coast, but then locally there's like no wind. So you'll get like these like six to eight foot rollers that are spaced out eight eight seconds apart and they are just like glassy downwind bumps that I just dream about and when you're when you're on one and when you're racing one, that's kind of
That's kinda where I find my my happy place.
Dan (1:37:43)
Would you just wanna like rip turns when you see something like that? No Huey,
hewi (1:37:48)
No, no, I don't like to do turns.
Dan (1:37:51)
it's every time I see something like that,
hewi (1:37:52)
But
Dan (1:37:53)
I'm like, it's rude not to do a turn right now.
hewi (1:37:57)
I don't know, I'm like so I'm on a Barracuda, an eight six Barracuda, so it's not pleasurable to turn, right?
Dan (1:38:03)
Mm-hmm.
hewi (1:38:04)
'Cause it's so long and then like you can touch down on the wave before and after it. And then I don't know, I think a lot of downland turns just look like wiggles. I don't know, they're not that cool. Like
Dan (1:38:16)
We have to make it look cool. I know what you mean though, because
it when you're traveling at speed, it is super hard to make it look like dynamic. It's just it's just like longboard
hewi (1:38:25)
Yeah.
Dan (1:38:26)
turns, right? but I think that's what the piranha is supposed to unlock.
hewi (1:38:32)
Yeah, yeah. I I really just need to go parrowing Hood River with footstraps and just like go ham on like doing loops to the back and like doing airs like Kylani's been doing and jumps and br breaching tips and stuff. Yeah.
Dan (1:38:46)
That's insane. The last he he dropped
a clip two clips now. He dropped another one today of him doing like
Rayleigh's and I think it was a Mob at one stage, but just doing three sixty down the ways during on the downwind run's pretty good. He touches the parawing for like he's the best. He's the best. He touches the parawing for
hewi (1:39:03)
He's the best. He's the best. He's the best.
Dan (1:39:07)
two minutes and we're all like, Okay, we gotta chase that now.
hewi (1:39:11)
I know, I know.
Dan (1:39:14)
Dude, we've been talking for a long time. Look, I'm so appreciative for you coming on the podcast and just sharing all this knowledge because it is incredible knowledge that I think it's super worth people getting exposed to. And hopefully this helps people understand a little bit of the downward matrix that we're all trying to solve. it's an it's an infinite game, so we're never gonna fully solve it, but I think there's nothing more pleasurable than
getting in tune with the conditions of the day and just feeling like you could just go forever, man. So look, I'm I'm really thankful for you coming on. Thank you for all your knowledge. and I hope this propagates, man, into as many people as possible.
hewi (1:39:57)
I hope so too. Yeah. Please use those resources. And again, like the first part was easy and as we went on it it gets more complicated and you really just need to sit down and read it yourself because yeah. But thanks for having me. I love talking waves and it was great.
Dan (1:40:14)
Good stuff, Huey. Well, thanks again for coming on, man. Let's keep in touch and thank you for all your knowledge. We appreciate it.
hewi (1:40:20)
Cool. Thank you.
