The Wedge Swell Window
California, USA · part of the The Wedge spot guide
- Swell window (from)
- 150°–230° (SSE–SW)
- Best direction
- ~190° (S)
- Period sweet spot
- 13–18 s
- Open-ocean height (Hs)
- 2–8 ft
- Resulting faces
- 3–25 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 is a narrow south-to-southwest arc, with the productive core south-to-south-southwest around 180 to 205° — the swell must run down the West Jetty at the right oblique angle for the reflection to stack; too westerly and it doesn’t rake the jetty, too easterly and it is shadowed. It wants long-period groundswell of roughly 13-to-18 seconds, and short-period wind swell wedges poorly.
Face is far larger than open-ocean height, which is the whole point: the jetty doubling makes a modest buoy reading produce a face one-and-a-half to two times bigger, and on the biggest tropical south swells the face reaches 25-to-30 feet off a much smaller open-ocean number. Never quote the buoy height as the wave size.