it was HOW big??

9 inches..... Sometimes 10 in the morning.

 

This should be on the testes thread...

 

its always overhead on shart-hunter

 

o man i'm gonna get a whoopin

 

I meant me....

 

you got lots of tatts?

 

They are talking about this little guy from Fantasy Island. Course who can blame you for not knowing, that show was on 30 years before you were born.

 

OHHHH, you are talking surf... Got it. Sorry for the inappropriate comment then.... It's monday, what are you gonna do right?

Anyway, This has always been a hot topic on here. Many people dispute it.... I have never LIVED in Hawaii, but been there, surfed there and always keep an eye on their wave height calling... So, having lived many years on both mainland coasts, they are my main two points of reference, but Hawaii has to be in the conversation, since they have, for many years confused the rest of the world and are mostly responsible for the world wide inconsistencies.

Here is my point of reference:
A wave face, that is about to pitch, (I mean, there is offshore wind and the lip is feathering, about to fold over) is standing up in the ocean 10 feet above Sea Level (or the "flats" I will call it). So from the flat water in front of the wave, up to the top of the wave face, before it breaks is the exact same height as a basketball hoop...

Translation:
East Coast: 8-10 Feet
West Coast: 4-6 Feet
Hawaii: 3-4 or 3-5 feet, depending on how they felt that day....

Again, I "Think" that most Hawaiians, when referencing wave heights use the thinking of "How big is the inside of the barrel, or, after the lip has already pitched, how big is the face out in FRONT of the wave.... That is where things get confusing....

California, trying not to be one upped all the time by their friend in the Islands, still use the "how many feet" terminaology, but ALWAYS undercall what it really is, thus trending more towards their island buddies, so that everytime there is a big swell in CA and it's references, the mainlanders don't look like Vaginas.

Because, I will tell you, what is considered 4-6 feet in Ocean Beach, SD is really, usually a giant closed out beach break that really has about an 8-10 foot face. I mean, when you are bottom turning, you are looking up at a lip or top of the wave face that is MUCH taller than a standard american basketball hoop, which is a universal 10 feet. So to me, that aint 4-6....

That is why looking at swell reports and stuff is so different. When you look at the Northshore, and you see that it's 3-5 feet, you probably think, man that would be super fun... 3-5 feet. But then you see it, and guys are standing up in the barrel and the faces look easily 10 feet....

Then there is the east coast, where 2-3 feet means, well, 2-3 feet. 3-5 feet means, you may occasionally stand up in a bottom turn and see an initial wave wace height of 5-6 feet, but generally, all the faces out in front of the wave are a legitimate 3-5 feet....

So, I think that the easy coast, for many obvious reasons has the BEST methods of wave height calculations, because they are the most realistic. The CA and HI ones leave too much grey area. Too much is open to interpretation... Cause I have seen too many days that claim to be 6-8 feet, and then you get up and riding and the wave face is 12-14 feet high.

So, my vote is to standardize all wave heights to east coast standards.... Sure, it will make more legit days at pipeline read in the 30-40 foot range, but it is what it is.... That to me, is a more true represenatation of how big those waves are.... Its just tough guy talk to call Pipeline, on its biggest day of the year 18 feet. I mean, it's just plain bigger than that to me.... And in CA, they have some of the same mentality....

And goodness, whoever brought the "Waist High" and "Chest High" and DOH" stuff just further confused things... Again, I think this is primarily an east coast measurement, because on most average days throughout the year, that is the easiest way for us to put into context how big the waves area... And because its so rare that it gets over head high, or OH, that its okay to use that system...

But when you get into the its DOH+3ft, or its 4ft OH, you get into a realm of complete inaccuracy.

I vote to call a spade a spade. I vote to convert wave heights into what they should be. The top to bottom measurement, at the waves tallest point, BEFORE IT BREAKS... cause at the end of the day, with regards to baord sized, duckdiving and general open water navigation, that is all that matter to us. How big is the FACE going to be in which we are paddling into. I don't want to know how big the barrel will be, or how big the outlying face will be.... Give me the nuts of it. When I am paddling out into a set wave and I have to deal with a wave face about to pitch over, HOW big is it? Period?

Let's deflate our over-inflated nut sacks and call it what it should be called.... Things get so confusing, and I have been undergunned SOOO many times out west because of the discrepancies in reported wave heights.

 

Nah. Hardly anybody here calls it in feet unless it's 20' faces or bigger.

Face Height : Name (Shorthand)
0-2': Knee-High (Flat)
2-3': Waist-High (WH)
3-5': Chest-High / Shoulder High (CH/SH)
6-8': Head-High (HH)
8-12': Overhead[++] (OH[++])
12-15': Double Overhead[+] (DOH[+])
15'+: Triple-Overhead (TOH) or just guess at face height.

 

Easy. It's 8-10'.

 

arent you a sponger too?

 

Buoy reading of height in feet x period x .06= surf height for peeps who surf real waves (cali, Hawaii, Australia, indo, south Africa etc)


I am not saying this makes sense, this is tradition for people in the know, you dont have to like but arguing it makes you look like a kook

head hi waves are 3 footers. yes you read that right

 

Yeah, doesn't make all that much sense to me, but that's what I have noticed. Is what it is.

 

when talking to east coast peeps I talk about body measurements, otherwise I use the standard, DOH would be 5-6 footers, TOH is about 8 feet or so. its a little loose, but its more about the size of the tube and power in the wave

all time EC for SNJ would be 10'@10sec from E or ENE, making a legit 6 footer.
coming close to DOH

sometimes just saying a 'few feet overhead' gets the point across

Also, in places with groundswell there are many more 'rouge sets', so it can be 5-6(10-12 foot face) foot and then a 8 foot (15ish foot face) set comes in and cleans everyone out.

EC is more exact as the swell has a tighter spread in size, other places the set size can vary greatly from set to set

check out www.surfnewsnetwork.com and scroll down to see how they do it