Fortress Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Well, grab a coffee and let’s have a yarn about the next couple of weeks at Fortress. I’ve been staring at the charts, and honestly, the short version is this: it’s looking pretty bleak for a proper paddle. We’ve got a solid stretch of flatness and mush ahead, so if you’re hanging for a wave, you might want to pick up another hobby for a bit. There’s a small window of hope late in the game, but it’s a long way off and comes with its own set of problems.

To kick things off, the water temp here is sitting at 70°, which is about 1.4° warmer than the long-term average for this time of year. So, it’s a touch on the warm side, but nothing crazy – just your usual late-summer feel.

Alright, let’s walk through it. The next several days are a total write-off. Wednesday the 9th has some swell, but it’s a weak, short-period 2.6ft at 4 seconds, coming from the SSW. The wind is a fresh 19 mph cross-shore, making it lumpy and messy. The energy is weak, way down at 38. Thursday the 10th brings a bit more size, pushing to 4.6ft, but the period is still a short 7 seconds, and while the wind is better (cross-off), the quality is just poor. It’s all just too jumbled and weak to be any fun.

Friday and the weekend basically flatline. We’re looking at 1.6ft to 2ft waves, which is ankle-biters territory. Saturday morning has a brief glassy period, but there's no swell to speak of. The energy readings are pathetic, down in the 20s and 30s. The whole stretch from Friday the 11th through to Tuesday the 15th is a multi-day gap of no real surf. I’m talking days of nothing. If the conditions are flat, the conditions are flat. It’s a common blank run for this area. You just have to accept it.

We get a little bump in energy on the 17th with a 3.9ft swell, but the wind is a fresh 19 mph cross-onshore, and it’s lumpy as all hell. That’s more of a kite-surfing wind than a wave-riding wind. Let’s be honest, that setup looks like a washing machine.

Now, the one glimmer of hope in the whole window is around Thursday the 24th of September. We’ve got a couple of days of building swell. It starts Thursday morning with a 4.3ft swell at 7 seconds, and then the afternoon sees it bump up to 4.6ft at 8 seconds. The combined energy starts to climb, hitting 206 in the morning and then 299 in the afternoon, which is moderate wave energy. The problem is the wind. It's a fresh 19 mph cross-onshore in the morning, easing to a moderate 12 mph cross-onshore in the afternoon. It’ll be chopped up and messy. But it is the only time in the period with any real push behind it. This is a long-range call, so don’t book the day off work just yet, but it’s the only one with any potential to be at least interesting. It’s still likely to be too messy for a clean session, but if you’re desperate, it’s your best shot.

So, bottom line: get the fishing rod out, or fix the dings on your board, because there’s not much to surf out there for the next couple of weeks.

Stay salty.

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