Crystals Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Gather 'round, surfers. Rusty here, and I’ve got the skinny on what’s happening at Crystals over the next couple of weeks. I gotta be straight with you – it’s a tough stretch. The swell window is barely cracked open, and most days we’re looking at tiny, weak waves. The combined wave energy is almost always in the low double digits (like 37, 33, 8) which is barely a whisper. There’s a solid gap from the start where there’s just nothing worth paddling out for.

The first real glimmer of hope, and I mean a glimmer, shows up on Wednesday afternoon, the 29th of July. We get a jump in energy to 121 – that’s moderate, but it’s still a very ordinary, surfable wave. The swell is a short-period 3 ft from the SE at 8 seconds. Not gonna set the world on fire. The water temp is sitting at a normal 75°F for this time of year, nothing weird there.

The whole first week is a write-off: tiny swells, cross-shore winds, and onshore breezes. It’s a real bummer. You get a few glassy mornings on the 29th and 3rd of August, but the swell is just too small – 0.7 ft and 2 ft – to do anything with.

Now, hold on to your boards, because the only real stand-out in this whole 16-day window is a big, dirty wave arriving on Tuesday the 11th of August. The combined energy spikes to 265 (strong) on Tuesday afternoon with a 6 ft NE swell. That’s a lot of water moving. But here’s the catch: the wind is howling onshore at 12 mph from the E, and the period is short at 7 seconds. This is gonna be a messy, blown-out, rippy mess. Crystals is a beach/jetty setup, so with that much onshore wind and that size, this is looking way more interesting for kite surfers than paddle surfers. This is expert-only territory, and even then, it’s a gamble. The 5 ft on Tuesday morning is also a no-go for beginners.

The week after that drops right back off into tiny, clean conditions but no power. The 3 ft ENE swell on the 6th of August morning with clean cross-off winds is the best of a bad lot, but the energy is only 45 and the period is a pathetic 5 seconds. It’s a knee-high dribbler.

So, to put it bluntly: there’s no good surf on offer for the first ten days. The only real swell (11th August) is a windy, expert-only mess. The rest is flat or tiny. It’s a blank run, and for this area, that’s not unusual. Forecasts can change, but right now, I’d be finding another hobby for a couple of weeks.

Rusty.

Read more