Surfing in Sri Lanka in April

Start with the world, because it explains why April is worth considering here at all. Of the seventeen coasts with a season recorded, exactly one is at its own peak in April, and it is Ireland, at ten degrees. April is the gap in the global calendar: the northern winter has finished producing and the southern winter has not started. Nowhere is at its best, so the question stops being where is it good and becomes where is it least bad and warmest.

On that question Sri Lanka answers well. The north-east monsoon is letting go, so the offshore mornings on the south coast grow patchy through the month, and the south-west monsoon that will run the east coast has not arrived. But the south still works, especially in the first fortnight and early in the day, and it works with almost nobody on it. By the last week you check the wind before getting up rather than assuming it, and the reefs at Midigama hold shape longer than the open beach because they need less help.

The water reaches 30°C, the highest reading of the Sri Lankan year and warmer than most heated pools. Put that beside Ireland at ten and you have the shape of April: the one coast at its peak is one you surf in five millimetres of neoprene with a hood, and the one that is merely good is one you surf in a rash vest.

Book the south coast, book it early in the month, and treat Hiriketiya as the insurance. Two headlands wrap the swell into the cove, so it keeps a rideable wave in a week when the open coast has gone to pieces. Arugam Bay is six to seven hours across the interior and six weeks from starting, which makes it the wrong answer in April however good it looks in July.

April on the south coast is a transition for an advanced surfer, and a cheap one. Plantations is down to two days out of seven in April and the wind takes sixty-six days in every hundred, so this is a month of reading a forecast rather than assuming a morning. The reefs hold their shape longer than the open beach does because they need less help from the wind to stand up, which is why April on this coast is a reef month by default rather than by preference.

The more interesting thing about April is what it says about everywhere else. Of the seventeen coasts with a season recorded here, exactly one is at its own peak this month, and it is Ireland at ten degrees. April is the gap in the global calendar: the northern winter has stopped producing and the southern winter has not started. So the question stops being where it is good and becomes where it is least bad and warmest, and a coast that gives you two reliable days at 30°C with nobody on it answers that better than it looks on paper.

The other answer is patience. Pottuvil Point, on the east coast, already gives two days in April on its way to five in May, and six weeks of waiting buys a completely different trip: long right-hand points instead of a chain of reefs, a drive of six to seven hours across the interior instead of two down the coast, and a town that is opening rather than closing. If your dates are fixed in April, take the first half on the south coast and the reefs at Midigama, and do not drive east for something that is six weeks from starting, however good it looks in July. The reefs there are a walk apart rather than a drive, which in a month of narrow windows means you can check three of them in the time it takes to decide on one anywhere else.