Brian C wrote:I wouldn’t mind trying the place one day when you are there. I gather that you have to careful about the current, so some insider experience would be helpful. The waves looked really good today.
I've only had it shut off on me completely once on a NW day there but I tend to use a floatier board when the forecast is iffy. A number of "walks of shame" when the wind lightened up and I couldn't stay up wind but no "dragged south" by the current days. One thing I like about the location is that there are nice big rollers coming through about 200m off the point and they tend to wrap a bit so the wind wave angle is a little different compared to CNL. Also, there are always waves right at the point but it tends to be better at a medium to low tide otherwise the waves break right on shore and the shore break can be brutal.
Today's forecast had some East in it so LHP has about 2km more fetch for waves to build than CNL and can be completely side shore off the South facing beach when it's completely East and a cleaner wind as no houses to go up and over like at CNL/3rd.
The current tends to be greatest right at the point with a lot of water moving around depending on the tide. It goes from deep to shallow a few hundred metres south of the point and can be spooky at times as you get unorganized pointy waves and a ton of chop and currents pulling you all over the place through the transition area.
When the tide is low I prefer to go to PR as there is less of a/no walk and there is no need to sail 1 km offshore to find waves or rolling swell. I think I only ventured out more than a few hundred metres today once or twice when I wanted to get back up wind. The rollers were smaller today than Saturday and had more chop in general but there were still some nice smooth sets coming through and the waves were setting up better today than Saturday at the point. I think that the tide was a little higher today and the switch to ESE late morning affected everything that was coming SE from farther South, hence the chop. The Ferry Terminal was reading 23 gusting to 30 knots all afternoon until about 4:30 PM today so I'm sure the waves must have cleaned up and continued to build as the afternoon progressed.
My first session in the morning wasn't very good as the wind dropped to 15 knots but glad I stayed as the 2nd session was fun on my 4.7 and 101L.