Surf Beaches

A reliable wave and an established break.

Consistency is what separates a surf beach from a beach that occasionally has waves, and it comes from exposure to a swell window plus a bottom that shapes it. The great surf coasts in this register face open ocean across thousands of kilometres: the Atlantic coast of Portugal, France and Morocco, the Pacific coasts of the Americas, the Tasman, and the Indian Ocean coasts of Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Wind matters as much as swell, which is why Nicaragua's Pacific beaches work for months at a time — a thermal gradient off Lake Nicaragua holds the wave face open daily. Beginners and experienced surfers want different things from the same list, so the portraits say which a break suits. Almost every beach here also carries rip currents, and the two facts are the same fact.