Portugal
Cap de BarbariaFormentera
dangerousexposed head-on to the swell today (city-level)
- window
- Go early here. The afternoon sea breeze comes in from exactly the south-southwest, the cape's bad sector, and builds a chop within two hours. The window runs May to October with warm water; in August be out before midday because of the boat traffic, and always between sunrise and sunset.
- tide
- In the Balearics the tide is measured in centimetres, about twenty-five at springs, so the phase decides nothing here. What actually moves water is the Freus channel between Ibiza and Formentera, where a real current runs, sharpened around the Barbaria point; days of wind raise the level more than the moon.
- shelter
- The cape faces south-southwest and is wide open across the whole 130-260 degree sector, with 210 the worst of it. It only turns good under a northerly tramuntana or mestral (0-40 degrees), which blows off the top of the cliff and flattens the surface, though it drops in hard gusts.
- conditions
- Formentera has the clearest water in the Balearics and on a flat day you see twenty to thirty metres; under Barbaria the bottom is stone, so it cleans up fast once the wind drops. What ruins it is southerly ground swell: above fifteen knots from the south there is nothing to do here.
Spain