Cloudbreak Alert Guide

Mamanuca Islands, Fiji · part of the Cloudbreak spot guide

Cloudbreak is forecast-only — there is no buoy within well over a thousand kilometres — so the forecast is the only option, and the value is the lead time to travel. The heights below are open-ocean readings; the deep-water-to-shallow-reef geometry magnifies them by roughly two to three times on the face.

The forecaster's checklist

1. 1.Find a deep Southern Ocean or Tasman low, south of New Zealand, with a fetch aimed up the Fiji corridor — ideally a captured fetch that lines the energy up.
2. 2.Give it about four to six days of travel time.
3. 3.Run on models — there is no near buoy — using GFS-Wave and Surfline plus the Tavarua and Namotu resort reports, watching for a dominant long-period south-southwest partition.
4. 4.Read the giant-day tell as all three at once: direction around 200–225°, period of 18–20 seconds, and open-ocean height of about 4 m or more.
5. 5.Time the strike for low-to-mid tide and confirm the east-southeast trade wind is light — the 2012 swell even ran on a light northerly, the lesson being that light wind of any direction beats strong trade.

Local winds & tide

Best wind: E–SE trade wind (offshore on the SW-facing reef) — from 90° to 160° (E–SSE).

Cloudbreak is tide-sensitive even though no tide series is modelled here — it works across the tide but is best low-to-mid, when it sits shallower, heavier and hollower; the Shish Kebabs end goes nearly dry at low.

Dial it in