Noosa (First Point) Swell Window
Sunshine Coast, QLD, Australia · part of the Noosa (First Point) spot guide
- Swell window (from)
- 10°–110° (N–ESE)
- Best direction
- ~60° (ENE)
- Period sweet spot
- 10–16 s
- Open-ocean height (Hs)
- 3–13 ft
- Resulting faces
- 2–8 ft
Open-ocean vs. the face: the heights on buoys and forecast models are significant wave height (Hs) in deep water. What you ride is the breaking face, which depends on period, direction and this break's bathymetry — that's why the two rows above differ. PierMonkey's spot ratings already do this conversion for you.
The window runs from north through east, best centred on east-northeast, where a cyclone swell reaches the north-facing points with least shelter loss. A secondary path is a large south-southeast swell that wraps the headland but arrives much diminished. Longer-period groundswell — around 12-to-15 seconds — refracts and wraps into the sheltered points far better than short windswell.
The points heavily shelter and soften raw swell, so the face is typically well below the open-ocean height, except on a direct east or northeast cyclone swell where the gap narrows. The same height from the wrong direction can produce almost nothing at First Point — read the height as open-ocean, not the face.