May is when the coast empties. Crowds and prices both fall to low, which happens in only two months of the year, and the village that fought over Anchor Point in January has room at every table. The sun is out nine and a half hours a day, the most of the year, the air reaches 24°C, and the sea is back above its winter level at 19°C. For somebody learning, those are the conditions that count, and May has them all at once.
Book it for the sand. Camps charge their lowest rates of the year, schools run small groups, and nobody books months ahead. April is the other great month to learn here, with a slightly bigger swell, a sea a degree colder and prices a step higher.
On the points, May has little left. The swell period falls to eight seconds, which means waves raised by wind close to the coast rather than by storms far out in the Atlantic, and they lack the push to wrap around a headland. Count only the clean days, when a surfable swell arrives and the wind leaves it alone, and Killer Point, Boilers and Cathedral Point give one each in a week, Hash Point two. An experienced surfer who comes in May expecting January goes home disappointed.
The sand is another story. The two sandbars below Tamraght give three days out of seven, La Baie at Imsouane three, on small, soft waves that suit a first week exactly. What May gives a learner is space: a beach with fewer groups on it, an instructor with time to watch you, and afternoons warm enough to spend on the sand. It is the cheapest good week on this coast.
