Portugal
Baia di SistianaDuino-Sistiana
borderlineexposed head-on to the swell today (city-level)
- window
- Every session has to be marked at the surface: without a marker you are not in order, quite apart from not being seen. On a shore oriented at 300° the usable light ends before the legal hour, which stays the hour of the sun. Italian law is the same everywhere; it is the local command that applies it. At Duino-Sistiana a short legal window beats a long questionable one.
- tide
- If anything changes the level at Duino-Sistiana, it is pressure and wind, not the moon. The Gulf of Trieste is the Italian exception: the range reaches about 0.8 m at springs and stays around 0.3 m at neaps. The ten-metre line, 690 m offshore, does not move with the level: it moves with the swell. In a channel it is the current that decides the route: plan it before getting in.
- shelter
- In Ponente or Tramontana the swell arrives across and you can still work by staying tight to the rock. 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 Maestrale not even that. If the swell starts working inside the 420 m of coastal strip, the session is over. The 690 m that separate the shore from ten metres of water tell you how much sea it takes to ruin the day.
- conditions
- The survey puts ten metres about 690 m from the shore and nothing deeper anywhere nearby. The bottom here is measured and not narrated: the contours come from the EMODnet survey. Past 690 m from the shore it is the water that decides the day and not the willingness. The best water nearly always arrives from offshore on a light Scirocco.
- hazard
- Marked set nets are left alone: getting caught in a net on breath-hold is the most dangerous thing in the whole day. With Maestrale into the mouth of the bay the water leaves through the middle and comes back along the sides: keep it in mind for the return. At 30 m from the shore no emergency sorts itself out: come out at the first sign. Keep in mind the 30 m that separate you from the coast when you decide on the last descent.
- access
- The first 420 m are the murkiest, and after them the bottom starts to read. At Duino-Sistiana the entry at the head of the cove is the one that holds up best even in a made-up sea. Whoever gets in first tells the others what they found. Do not leave your gear where the swell can take it.
Sheltered rock-sand bay; the offshore Bora clears the water. Northern Adriatic tide is active here.
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