Portugal
Baia Flaminia / San BartoloGabicce Monte
borderlineexposed head-on to the swell today (city-level)
- window
- With ten metres of water 1300 m from the shore, the band where you meet the local orders is all of it right here. Sixteen years of age is the legal minimum for handling a speargun in the water. The last stretch, the 1300 m out to ten metres of water, is the one you will swim tired: put it in the day's arithmetic. In the dark the window shuts by law and not by choice.
- tide
- With a range that small the entry rock sits at the same level at any hour. At Gabicce Monte nobody plans an outing around the tide, and they are right not to. Water pushing you towards the northeast, that is towards the open sea, is the signal to come out. A surge pushed by Grecale can raise the level more than the tide itself.
- shelter
- 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 Grecale not even that. The opening to the northeast is wide: no nearby storm is needed here, an old sea from that sector is enough. When the swell gets in, the whole coastal strip, 490 m wide here, lifts and the clarity goes. With the wind from the southwest at your back you can work; with the swell from the northeast in your face you look and go home.
- conditions
- With the five-metre band at 490 m and little else, the day is decided entirely by the clarity. Here the shape of the bottom is the only certain figure, and it is worth reading before you get in. At Gabicce Monte the good days are few and have to be taken when they come. With the sun high the rock reads; under cloud you have to work closer.
- hazard
- With Grecale 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. The marker has to follow you even when you are working 1300 m from the shore: 50 m from the vertical below it is the legal maximum. Work out the way back with the tiredness already factored in. At 40 m from the shore no emergency sorts itself out: come out at the first sign.
- access
- The first 490 m are the murkiest, and after them the bottom starts to read. At Gabicce Monte the entry at the head of the cove is the one that holds up best even in a made-up sea. An access that is comfortable in a flat sea can be unusable half an hour later. Count the 490 m that separate you from the five-metre contour: they are the measure of the way back.
Rocky patches below the San Bartolo cliff; limited visibility, for fair weather.
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