The Story of Anchor Point, Morocco
Anchor Point is the wave that put Taghazout on the world’s surf map — a long, walling right-hander that peels off a rocky headland on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, a short drive north of the village. On the right winter swell it links section after section for hundreds of metres, jacking up on the outer rock shelf, throwing the odd barrel and then walling into open face all the way toward the inside. It handles size about as well as any point in the country, holding its shape from waist-high runners up to double- and triple-overhead. For decades it has drawn travelling surfers down the coast every winter, and it remains the most famous break on the whole Moroccan Atlantic.
The Road North of Taghazout
Most surf trips to Anchor Point start at Agadir’s Al Massira airport, about 25 kilometres to the south, then run up the coast road through Taghazout — the old fishing village turned surf town that grew up on the back of this wave. The point itself sits a few kilometres further north, marked by a dusty car park tucked behind the ruins of an old fish-processing factory, where vendors sell mint tea and coffee to surfers waiting on the tide. From the car park you look straight down the line — on a good day you will see it long before you reach the sand, a procession of clean lines wrapping the point and peeling away to the right.
Getting into the water is part of the challenge. You can paddle the long way around from the beach to the north, but most surfers pick their moment and jump off the boulders at the point, timing the leap for a lull between sets. Reef booties help on the urchin-covered rocks, and because the Atlantic here typically sits around 15 to 19°C in the prime months, a 3/2mm wetsuit is standard winter kit.
A Headland and an Old Tuna Trap
The wave owes everything to the shape of the land. A finger of rock and boulder juts out from an otherwise straight, cliff-backed coast, and the reef shelf that runs off it faces the open North Atlantic. Powerful northwest and west groundswells — generated by winter storms tracking across the ocean far to the north — wrap around the headland and feather down the shelf, which is why the wave grooms so cleanly and holds its shape as it grows. It is at its best on a low-to-mid tide, and cleanest when the wind blows offshore from the northeast.
Locally the spot is known as Almadraba, after the traditional trap-net fishery once worked along this coast to catch migrating Atlantic bluefin tuna. An old tuna-processing factory stood beside the point — a low wall still stands a hundred metres or so toward Taghazout from the tip — and, as the story goes, it was the anchors left at the site that gave the wave its English name. That fishing heritage still shapes the place — small boats work out of Taghazout below the surf camps, and the coast north of the point stays rugged and largely undeveloped.
The Wave, and the Crowd It Draws
Anchor Point was, as the story goes, ridden by travelling Australian surfers back in the 1960s, and it has been a fixture of the international surf circuit ever since. On a quality swell the ride can run up to around 500 metres, breaking in three main takeoff zones that let the crowd spread out along the point. The outside section jacks up hard and can barrel off the top of the shelf; from there the wave walls up and races down the line through faster, more open sections toward the inside. The take-off is famously tight, and the currents and backwash can be strong on bigger days.
The season runs roughly from autumn into spring — most consistent from November through March, with the biggest swells often arriving in December and January — and the line-up gets busy whenever the forecast lights up, because this is a wave that surfers fly in to ride. Anchor is the marquee name in a string of right-hand points along this stretch — Killer Point, Mysteries and Panorama among them — but it is firmly an intermediate-to-advanced spot: between the rocky entry, the urchins, the crowd and the power of the swell, beginners are far better served by the mellower breaks around Taghazout and neighbouring Tamraght.