Surfing in Morocco in August

August is when the sea finally warms: 22°C, the highest reading of the year, warm enough for a shorty. The air stays at 27°C, rain is close to nil, and the days are long. It is the most comfortable month of the year to be in the water and one of the least productive to surf in, which makes August a holiday with surf in it rather than a surf trip.

The sand keeps working: three days in a week at both Tamraght sandbars and at La Baie in Imsouane, counting only the clean days, those with a rideable swell and no wind on it. The points give one day or none: Killer Point, Boilers and Banana Point one each, Cathedral Point none, and Hash Point one, lost to a swell too small to reach it rather than to the wind.

The evenings are the other half of an August week. Crowds and prices are at their summer high, and in Taghazout that means full communal camps and a loud table at seven, which is exactly why people who arrive alone leave with a group. Tamraght, five minutes away, is quieter and residential, good for families; Imsouane, ninety minutes north, is the sea and dinner and nothing else. You surf two hours a day, in the morning before the wind, and the other twenty-two decide the week.

Surfers who want the points in August have to fly long-haul to find a coast in season. For everyone else, Morocco in August is a three-hour flight to warm sand, 22°C water and small waves, and for a family or a first-timer that is a good week. Book early, and ask the camp how large its groups are: August puts the biggest school groups of the year on the same two sandbars.

August gives an experienced surfer in Taghazout about one day in a week on the points, and not every week. Killer Point, Boilers and Banana Point each give one clean day out of seven; Cathedral Point at Imsouane can go the whole week without one. The north wind is the reason for most of it: at Boilers, Banana Point and Cathedral the swell is there more often than the wind lets it be ridden. Hash Point, sheltered at the top of the village, gives one day too, and loses the rest to swell too small to reach it.

The swell is up slightly on July, 0.9 m, still short, and a camp that watches the forecast can put you on a point the rare morning a bigger swell arrives. Hash Point is the one to check first on those mornings: it is a walk from the camps, and it fills for exactly that reason. Between swells, a good surfer's August is a longboard at La Baie, where a small day is a very long ride, or the Tamraght sandbars at dawn before the wind. Two hours on a longboard in the early light, then the day belongs to the beach. The water is 22°C, the warmest of the year, so a shorty covers any session however long, the air is 27°C, and the villages are full of people on holiday rather than on a surf trip.

If the points are why you travel, August is a month to go elsewhere, and every coast in season is a long-haul flight. If August in Morocco is fixed, sleep in Taghazout, where Hash Point is a walk from the camps and prices start at 21 € a night, and keep the evenings for the communal tables, which are at their fullest now. Anyone chasing the real return of the swell should move a month: September brings back the long period, and Boilers doubles to two days.