Surfing in Morocco in June

June is the last low-season month before the European holidays, and the quietest of the year: crowds and prices low, no rain at all, the air at 26°C and the water at 20. It is also when the summer wind sets in. A north wind blows down this coast from June to August and decides the shape of every day. The morning is the time to surf, and by the afternoon the exposed breaks are ragged.

For a beginner, June still works. Counting the clean days, a surfable swell that the wind has not yet chopped up, both Tamraght sandbars give three in a week, and La Baie at Imsouane three. At Tamraght the wind takes roughly two days of a week and a sea too small to ride one or two more, which is the summer pattern in miniature: small, clean surf early, and a school day that finishes before lunch.

For someone who surfs points, a week can pass without a session. Killer Point barely breaks clean at all; Boilers, Cathedral Point and Banana Point give one day each, and lose the rest to the north wind rather than to a lack of swell. Hash Point, sheltered from that wind, gives one day too, for the opposite reason: the swell is too small to reach it.

Morocco's case in June is the quiet: low prices, empty sand and 20°C water, in the last month before July fills the villages. An experienced surfer with June dates will find the season running on other coasts. A beginner, a couple who want a holiday with surf in it, or anyone who hates a crowd will find the best-value week of the summer here, as long as they surf early and leave the afternoon to the wind.

For an experienced surfer, June in Morocco is a week that can pass without one session on the points. Killer Point can go the whole week without a clean day; Boilers, Cathedral Point and Banana Point give one day out of seven, and so does Hash Point. The reason differs by break, and it tells you what June is. The exposed points lose their days to the north wind of summer, which starts now: at Boilers the swell turns up often enough, and the wind ruins it nearly every time. Hash Point, tucked into the village and out of that wind, is starved rather than blown out: the swell rarely has the size to get in.

The swell has fallen to its annual low, 0.7 m at eight seconds, short-period waves made by wind rather than by distant storms. Anchor Point needs a winter swell to break, and June has none to give. What is left for a good surfer is a longboard and an early start: the sandbars at Tamraght in the morning, before the wind, or the long right of La Baie at Imsouane, which at this size is a slow wave with a very long ride. The water is 20°C and the air 26°C, and it does not rain. It is a good month to be on this coast and a poor one to surf it at your level.

If the points are why you travel, go where the season is, and in June that means a long-haul flight. If Morocco is fixed, pick Taghazout for the company, with camps from 21 € a night and Hash Point a walk away for the one morning a swell reaches it. The points come back in September, when Boilers doubles to two days, and properly in October, when it gives three.