Portugal
Cala CipollaChia
borderline⛔ Banned here
exposed head-on to the swell today (city-level)
- window
- From sunset to sunrise spearfishing is prohibited (DPR 1639/1968, art. 129): the window is entirely a daytime one. Spearfishing on breath-hold is allowed by day; at night it is banned under DPR 1639/1968. The last stretch, the 740 m out to ten metres of water, is the one you will swim tired: put it in the day's arithmetic. A shore oriented at 188° loses the sun before sunset: take it into account for the last descent.
- tide
- The right question on this coast is not what the tide is doing but what swell has been through. With a range that small the entry rock sits at the same level at any hour. At Chia the level changes little, but the current towards the south can be noticeable in the channels. If the current takes you past the 740 m of the ten-metre line, head straight back for land.
- shelter
- You are in the lee in Tramontana; the moment the wind goes south, the water under the shore dirties. In a bay like this the shelter is a few tens of metres wide, tucked against the windward point rather than in the middle of the arc, and in a hard Ostro not even that. With the wind from the north at your back you can work; with the swell from the south in your face you look and go home. A metre of long swell from the south is worth more than two metres of short chop raised inshore.
Spain