Anchor Point Alert Guide

Taghazout, Morocco · part of the Anchor Point spot guide

Anchor Point is forecast-only — the nearest buoy is well over a thousand kilometres away — so calling it is model-reading. The height below is an open-ocean reading, not the face.

The forecaster's checklist

1. 1.Track a deep North Atlantic low between Iceland and the Azores with a west-to-northwest fetch aimed at ~30°N.
2. 2.Watch period climb toward 12–16 seconds arriving ahead of the local wind — groundswell outrunning its storm.
3. 3.Give it roughly a day and a half to three days of travel once the fetch sets up.
4. 4.Run on models — there is no near buoy — using GFS-Wave via Windguru, Surfline and Windy, with the Canary Islands buoys as an upstream reality check.
5. 5.Confirm a northeast offshore (the cape funnels the north wind cleanly out to sea) and a low-to-dropping tide.

Local winds & tide

Best wind: NE–E offshore (the cape funnels the north wind out to sea) — from 20° to 110° (NNE–ESE).

Low tide is preferred; it breaks through the mid tide and holds on higher tide when the swell is big. No tide series is modelled here.

Dial it in