Surfing in Morocco in February

Nothing in the swell changes between January and February. The same North Atlantic systems send the same long-period swell at the same size, and the morning offshore holds as often. The sea is what moves: it reaches 17°C, the lowest reading of the year on this coast. One degree sounds like nothing. Two hours into a session it is the difference between a 3/2 that was fine and a 4/3 you wish you had rented, and a February session tends to end when you get cold rather than tired.

The days barely notice. Counting the clean days, the ones with a surfable swell and no wind to spoil it, Anchor Point and Banana Beach give four in a week, as in January. La Baie at Imsouane slips from five to four. The exposed points feel the wind a little more: Killer Point and Banana Point give two days, Boilers and Hash Point three.

The air makes up for some of it: 22°C in the afternoon, eight hours of sun, and the least rain of the four winter months, so the hours between sessions are spent outside rather than in the camp. Morocco is also the one coast at its winter peak that most of Europe reaches in an afternoon.

What 17°C costs is paid mostly by a learner. Somebody who surfs spends a session paddling, which keeps them warm; somebody learning spends it standing in white water, falling off and wading back out, which does not. A first-timer gets the same four clean days in Tamraght as in January and fewer good hours from each. The fix is a thicker suit from the camp and a second, shorter session instead of one long one. The Christmas peak is behind you; crowds and prices are not.

February at Anchor Point asks an experienced surfer for one thing January did not, and that is a thicker suit. Anchor Point is clean four days out of seven, level with January, and the long-period swell that wraps around its headland has not weakened at all. Hash Point, Boilers and Cathedral Point at Imsouane give three; Killer Point and Banana Point drop to two, because the wind gets at the exposed points a little more often than it did a month earlier.

Point surfing at 17°C is a question of stamina. A good session at Anchor Point is long, because the wave is: a take-off at the stone end, a wall that stands up hollow and fast, then a shoulder that opens out and keeps going. In a 4/3 that is two or three hours in the water; in a 3/2 it is less, and boots are a matter of taste rather than need. Surf the morning offshore, eat, and look again in the afternoon, once the crowd that paddled out at dawn has gone back to its camps. Boilers, twelve kilometres north towards Cap Ghir, is the call when the village is onshore. It sits in a wind channel between the Atlas foothills and the sea, and throws a fast right over reef that upper intermediates and experienced surfers make the drive for, with rips, rock and a rusting wreck close to the wave.

The crowd is still at its winter high, and February is when the choice of base pays for itself. Sleep in Taghazout near Hash Point and the dawn session is on foot; camps run from 21 € a night to 110 €, and the ones worth their price tell you which break they take you to rather than promising you will go surfing. If Anchor Point is full, Cathedral Point at Imsouane is shorter and faster and barrels at low tide over mixed rock and sand, ninety minutes north on a road that goes nowhere else. And if the water is the real obstacle, November gives you the same season two degrees warmer.