Portugal
Capo NoliNoli-Varigotti
borderlineexposed head-on to the swell today (city-level)
- window
- The recreational fishing declaration to MASAF has to be made before you go down, and it is renewed every year. The framework is national: in Italy the basic rules hold from Ventimiglia to Trieste. The last stretch, the 680 m out to ten metres of water, is the one you will swim tired: put it in the day's arithmetic. A check takes two minutes to settle if your declaration is in order.
- tide
- The regime is microtidal: the level at Noli-Varigotti moves less than half a metre even at springs. Tide tables here explain a local current more often than they choose an hour. If the current is faster than your easy pace, it is already too much. The direction of the current changes with the wind of the last few hours.
- shelter
- The shore in front of the mark faces northeast, about 34°, so everything arriving from that sector gets in unobstructed. The point cuts the sea into two faces; on the same forecast one of them works and the other does not, and which is which you see from above before going down. If the swell starts working inside the 610 m of coastal strip, the session is over. The local wind can turn in the afternoon: what was in the lee in the morning is not by midday.
- conditions
- The useful band lies between the 680 m of the ten-metre line and the 810 m of the twenty: that strip is where you work. At Noli-Varigotti the clarity is built on the days without swell, not on the hours without wind. Better two hours in the right water than six in the wrong one. The nearest river mouth is the first thing to look at after rain.
- hazard
- Marked set nets are left alone: getting caught in a net on breath-hold is the most dangerous thing in the whole day. The big sets reach an open point while the rest of the coast is still quiet. Check your gear beforehand, not in the water. Hypothermia works slowly: you feel it on the way out, not during.
- access
- On a point you get in from the lee flank, never off the exposed tip. The mark stands off the shore by about 150 m: here the access starts with a crossing. At Noli-Varigotti many accesses cross private property: if it is signed, look for another one. Whoever gets in first tells the others what they found.
Sheer limestone cliff underwater, walls and boulders; dentex, white bream, corb.
Google Maps
Spain