May is the southern swell season getting properly under way. The point at Nuquí starts seeing days it can use, the reef keeps doing what it does, and the rain is heavy and constant.
The water reaching its annual high this month is worth stating precisely because of how little it means. Nuquí runs between 27.2° and 28.3° across twelve months, a range of about one degree, which is the narrowest of any coast here. In Ireland the calendar is a series of decisions about neoprene and in France it is a wetsuit thickness a month. Here it is a rash vest, in January and in July, and the entire temperature column can be read once and forgotten.
What cannot be read once and forgotten is the swell, and from now until October it is the thing to watch.
