Top 5 Downwinding Places In The World?

[Off-Shore]

speaking of Mistral: La Ciota to Six Fours (Brutal beach), or La Seyne-sur-Mer to l'Almanarre or Porquerolles are epic downwinders on the French Cote d'Azure.

Thanks Yugi for all your posts. Would be great to see some vids of these places.

[yugi]

^^ I don't have any but you should find plenty online, guys there been at it for a while (but most of their viddy sucks).

In 2008, after a great session kiting in 30+ knots Mistral in Almanarre I was chatting with a local ex-pro windsurfer and, having gotten into standup paddling myself, I asked if he was into it. I initially didn't believe him when he said had chosen to SUP that day as conditions were so "festive", also not understanding how he could possibly paddle out in those waves, until he explained that they were taking off further upwind and downwinding it. That's when I got the hint!

For local beta just pop into the Windsurf shops on Brutal Beach or l'Amanarre and ask the owners. Didier Leneil has the Nexpa surf shop on Brutal Beach. He won the 2012 French Championships SUP Beach Race  just BTW. Check it out, it's not downwinding but plenty of carnage. Men's Final starts at 8:15. Didier Leneil is the guy with grey hair on the old school (V1) white Fanatic board (which has less rocker than a pancake). He's probably twice the age of most of the others. Methinks he's getting lots of practice where he lives!

 


You mentioned Lago di Garda. That should be a pretty special DW spot. Just not a lot of fetch on the waves. At dawn the wind will blow 30kn out of the Mtns in the North and die during the morning, then thermals pick up strong the other way around noon on a sunny day. Downwind down with the wind and stop for brunch, then downwind back the other way. I haven't been but it's part of the plan. Should be fun. Good sailing, mountain biking, climbing, and food too.

[yugi]

Found a couple. 40 to 50 knots enough for ya?

DW to l'Almanarre. And that's  within the bay. If you go from the point to the island of Porquerolles the swell gets way hairy.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xllywt_downwind-stand-up-paddle-par-mistral-dans-la-baie-de-l-almanarre_sport

La Ciota to Six-Fours (nickname: Brutal Beach because in an 80's windsurf world cup event in festive conditions Robbie Naish said  on arrival "Wow. That's brutal.")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psj4tmBJTrQ

[Off-Shore]

Found a couple. 40 to 50 knots enough for ya?

DW to l'Almanarre. And that's within the bay. If you go from the point to the island of Porquerolles the swell gets way hairy.

La Ciota to Six-Fours (nickname: Brutal Beach because in an 80's windsurf world cup event in festive conditions Robbie Naish said  on arrival "Wow. That's brutal.")

Hey Yugi, thanks for posting and all the inside info.. 40 - 50 knots... brutal indeed.. but awesome too! Gotta go one day!

[Off-Shore]

I haven't been other places (and I know it doesn't compete with "top 5 in the world"), but for those of us in the Midwest...Lake Michigan in late Summer/early Fall is pretty good.  water temps in the mid 60s to low 70s, winds out of the north or south can be 20-30 and waves can be in the 6'-10' range.  I'll take it!

I have a buddy who windsurfs on Lake Michigan and raves about the wind and swells and the weirdness of it being all in fresh water. Love to see a vid of any SUP downwinding on Lake Michigan if anyone finds some.

[55NSup]

I went to Cumbuco in NW Brazil  for two weeks to kite surf 5 years ago,  great place. Theres like 400 km of side shore winds from Forteleza and heading wnw. .  It gets pretty desolate in spots. Get stuck out there and you would be in trouble...

Humm. Tarifa sound cool. And Garda. Windsurfed there 30 years ago.

[headmount]

A great DW spot always requires adequate wind speed but also some other factors to make it good.  Water depth is one. Also a coordinated sea surface.  Hard to really see clearly from that video but the surface appeared a tad confused to me.  Wind speed was there but many of the big fattys were rolling underneath him.  To me this means too deep but it could be other factors. 

We get funky days from Maliko when different swell directions are crossing up the surface.  You begin to drop in and a cross swell lifts you up and out of the glide.  This usually occurs in the winter during big N-NW swells and even a big NE can cross up.  But a huge E is really a gas because it combines well with the locally generated wind swell.

The video I've seen of the Capetown run is spectacular and DJ's stuff from Port Phillip Bay shows very groomed conditions. 

If conditions are lined up, enormous wind speeds aren't really that necessary.  Cove and I went on our southside yesterday in 15mph, probably a minimum, but it was well combed and reasonably fun except for the absurd heat.  If you want to sweat off some weight come to Hawaii right now.

[Off-Shore]

A great DW spot always requires adequate wind speed but also some other factors to make it good.  Water depth is one. Also a coordinated sea surface.

The video I've seen of the Capetown run is spectacular and DJ's stuff from Port Phillip Bay shows very groomed conditions. 

If conditions are lined up, enormous wind speeds aren't really that necessary.  Cove and I went on our southside yesterday in 15mph, probably a minimum, but it was well combed and reasonably fun except for the absurd heat.  If you want to sweat off some weight come to Hawaii right now.

Headmount. We often downwind in 15mph winds here and I have often wondered why some areas are better than others. Your description of a "well groomed run" describes the places that were better. What is the optimum depth of water in your opinion for well groomed downwind runs?

[headmount]

A great DW spot always requires adequate wind speed but also some other factors to make it good.  Water depth is one. Also a coordinated sea surface.

The video I've seen of the Capetown run is spectacular and DJ's stuff from Port Phillip Bay shows very groomed conditions. 

If conditions are lined up, enormous wind speeds aren't really that necessary.  Cove and I went on our southside yesterday in 15mph, probably a minimum, but it was well combed and reasonably fun except for the absurd heat.  If you want to sweat off some weight come to Hawaii right now.

Headmount. We often downwind in 15mph winds here and I have often wondered why some areas are better than others. Your description of a "well groomed run" describes the places that were better. What is the optimum depth of water in your opinion for well groomed downwind runs?

It's not even an opinion ... more like a guess.  But from what we've seen around here, 40-80 feet with 20+mph seems ideal.  We have inner reef sections that are only two feet deep and they're fun and steady when the wind is blowing but don't have the top end speed that deeper water has.  Too deep, like 500-1000 feet and lots of it is rolling under your feet too fast to catch.    Strong tidal currents can also knock the hell out of things. The wild deal is the Gorge where your ground speed is slow while you fly along at warp.  Never SUPed there but can't wait.  Bays that protect from crossing swells are the best.  Here examples are off south Maui (Maalaea Bay) and the protection of the channel that defines the south shore off Molokai.  Maliko can be good be always a code breaker to deal with.  Depths of all three are around 40-80 with sudden shallow exceptions that PBill knows about.

[Off-Shore]

It's not even an opinion ... more like a guess.  But from what we've seen around here, 40-80 feet with 20+mph seems ideal.  We have inner reef sections that are only two feet deep and they're fun and steady when the wind is blowing but don't have the top end speed that deeper water has.  Too deep, like 500-1000 feet and lots of it is rolling under your feet too fast to catch.    Strong tidal currents can also knock the hell out of things. The wild deal is the Gorge where your ground speed is slow while you fly along at warp.  Never SUPed there but can't wait.  Bays that protect from crossing swells are the best.  Here examples are off south Maui (Maalaea Bay) and the protection of the channel that defines the south shore off Molokai.  Maliko can be good be always a code breaker to deal with.  Depths of all three are around 40-80 with sudden shallow exceptions that PBill knows about.

Thanks Headmount. Be interesting to hear from DJ and South Africa what their depths are. I'm off to buy a marine chart to see what the depths are where we paddle to see if there is a correlation.

[peterp]

Looking at maps for Cape Town Milnerton Big Bay run it's 30-45ft (10-15m) which fits HM's specs for an ideal run. Millers is deeper and swells do tend to run under you much more.

The other consideration is the shape of the coast line. We experience a little reflection in the last 3rd of the Milnerton Big bay run as the coast bends back into the course. A parallel coast line would be ideal (like Molokai's Kamalo - Kaunakakai) and to some degree Maliko. Maliko's end section does suffer a from a little bounce back from harbour wall and coast.

Beginners term the last 3rd of Milnerton run the Bermuda triangle as wind swell starts mixing with reflective waves off the coast and ocean swells. It can be quite disorganised but with practice the best guys fly through there.

[PonoBill]

As usual, things are much more complicated than you'd hope. There's a great, highly condensed article on Surfline that supplies most of the tools for understanding what goes on:  http://www.surfline.com/surfology/surfology_forecast2.cfm.

The primary reason swells roll under riders is that they are moving to fast and have no definition or steepness on their face. The best riders accelerate their boards with small swells, hop to medium sized ones and then get the biggies. You really can't paddle fast enough to get the big on your own. If there isn't enough of that kind of texture you're not going to make it no matter how good you are.

When swells start to be affected by the bottom they slow down, The contact a sloping shore at the front first of course, so the energy at the back starts to catch the energy at the front and they stack. If the depth varies, as it does in our runs which are parallel to the shoreline, then the swells stack and unstack--something we've all seen. But nothing makes them speed up again. At Maliko the swell has been traveling hundreds or thousand of mile through very deep water where there's no slowing. Swells would dissipate, but there's steady trades to keep them rolling. So they hit the gulch as big rollers 15 feet high and then slow and stack/ unstack (thank god) over places like Camp One.

The depth of water where they start to be affected is a function of wavelength.  From that article above: take the number of seconds between swells, square it, and then multiply by 2.56. The result will equal the depth the waves begin to feel the ocean floor. A 20-second swell will begin to feel the ocean floor at 1,024 feet of water (20 x 20 = 400. And then 400 x 2.56 = 1,024 feet deep). In some areas along California, that's almost 10 miles offshore. An 18-second wave will feel the bottom at 829 feet deep; a 16-second wave at 656 feet; a 14-second wave at 502 feet; a 12-second wave at 367 feet; a 10-second wave at 256 feet; an eight-second wave at 164 feet; a six-second wave at 92 feet and so on. As noted above, longer period swells are affected by the ocean floor much more than short-period swells. For that reason, we call long-period swells ground swells (generally 12 seconds or more). We call short-period swells wind swells (11 seconds or less) because they are always generated by local winds and usually can't travel more than a few hundred miles before they decay.

Besides the primary swells there's those beneficial smaller, slow swells that we count on to get rolling. They need shallow water to peak up and have a face we can use. Those little texture waves have a very short period--like 1 to 5 seconds, so they won't get peaky in anything much more than 30-50 feet.

There's a lot more to it. I've studied it endlessly--not that knowing really does me any good--but I have a habit of trying to substitute my natural nerdiness for experience and skill. I"ll write a longwinded article about this on Ponostyle sometime. But right now I've got to go paddle OC6. We left the boats pulled up on the grass at the Event Center last night after a little party. I volunteered to help get them back to the Marina.

[covesurfer]

Interesting stuff to contemplate.

Our Kihei run, which is one of the best in a wide variety of wind conditions, has relatively shallow waters but also a zero-fetch initial point for wave generation. Depths are 5 to 14 fathoms (30' to 84') according to my NOAA chart that I have hanging in my office. The Kamalo run along the south side of Molokai is 14 to 19 fathoms  (84' to 114') and generates very similar conditions to those found on the Kihei run, only I'd say Kamalo is like the very best portions of Kihei for it's entirety. What's interesting about Kamalo, when you compare it to Kihei, is that it's not a zero fetch situation. Although because of the primary wind and swell directions in the Pailolo, most of that energy is not hitting Kamalo directly.

Anyway, there's plenty of nerdy stuff here to think and talk about. As if the hardcore downwinders need more sh*t to converse about that relates to the activity of their/my obsession.....

[headmount]

Talking about it when there's no wind.  We're dying here.  Another scorcher today but relief may come soon.

I agree with Cove that the Kamalo set up is the very best, groomed with doors open at both ends.

[Off-Shore]

...so yesterday I went to our local Sailing Club and bought a marine map of the areas we downwind here to check as per Headmount's suggestion the depths. Yesterday the wind was 15mph and perfectly aligned to paddle through the gap between two islands. So when I got back I took a look at the map and as Headmount predicted the good parts of the run, the well groomed area is where the water is shallower. However I was a little surprised to find I was paddling over a munitions dump.

Next time I'll take a wider berth of the fishing vessel that was anchored there...

(Depths on this chart are in meters)