The World’s Best Onshore Waves

Surfing orthodoxy, and the very building blocks of meteorology, says onshore wind bad, offshore wind good. 

And while all waves are equal, when it comes to the “onshy”, we’ve discovered that some waves are more equal than others. 

To be clear, we aren’t talking about this new-fangled “air wind”, nor those one-percent waves where only the best pros can ride ‘em. 

This list is an overdue compilation of breaks that still shine when the wind sets against them — ones that you or I or Ben Gravy could ride. 

Now presenting the six best onshore waves in the world, in some particular order (but we won’t say which). 

Cloudbreak

If you were to approach the rear-end of Cloudbreak for the first time by boat, you might be a little concerned by the wind. And there is always wind. 

If Tavarua is a speck in the vast Pacific, then Cloudbreak — a reef pass more than a mile off the island — is a tiny pinprick open to all the prevailing, and unprevailing, weather systems that pass her glorious sweep. 

Upon approach, you’d likely have a south-to-south easterly wind blowing your hair towards the bow. The mean windspeed in the prime months from May to September is 10 knots. Your surfer’s instinct would triangulate the endless whitecaps and the waves wrapping down the reef and detect a strong side-shore-to-onshore wind. 

And to be fair, if you took off on a wave on The Point (the outside section), your instincts would be correct. The chop and bump aren’t mentioned in the brochure. And yet as you drive towards the channel, the wave hugs the curvature of the reef, bending back to face the wind. 

If it is low tide, the water drawing off the coral further flattens the surface, and the exposed shelf further up the point halts any long-range chop from entering the king’s quarters, like a reverse moat. 

If and when you negotiate the 300-yard racetrack, by the time you hit the inside, that strong sideshore is now miraculously blowing into your face, helping to provide one of the cleanest, purest and most glorious waves on the planet.

What fucking sideshore?

Soup Bowl

Soup Bowl is a lot of things: fun, rippable, heavy, and slabby (but never plural: Soup Bowls).

What it often isn’t though, is offshore. 

The wave is located on Barbados’ East Coast — a relatively straight if unnecessarily rocky expanse that stares into the teeth of the Caribbean’s prevailing northeasterlies. The cool trades that knock the edge off the equatorial heat blow consistently through the dry season, from December to June. The rest of the time they swirl and shift, but unless a hurricane passes at just the right angle, local winds rarely get stuck in the southwest quadrant — offshore at the Bowl.  

Soup Bowl’s iconic status (Kelly Slater did after all call it his favourite wave in the world at one point) comes from its ability to maintain a firm bowl-ish shape despite a wind that should turn it to chopped lettuce. 

The key to this is the ever-present rip that runs machine-like through the line-up. The force of the water runs diametrically to the waves, adding intensity and providing an almost standing wave effect that smoothes the faces. Snell’s Law of Refraction, where one part of a wave travels more slowly than another and bends the wave toward the reef, does the rest. 

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Kalk Bay Reef

Five days out of seven, if you were to stand in the middle of the south-facing False Bay, flanked by Cape Peninsula to the west and Cape Hangklip to the east, you’d be buffeted senseless by the prevailing southeast wind. Cape Town is windy. It makes Chicago look like Lemoore. The tip of Cape Peninsula — the point where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet — records a hundred days of gale-force wind each year. 

This should be a problem for Kalk Bay Reef, which is tucked inside False Bay, but still faces southeast. That gnawing southeasterly should obliterate any chance of hollow lefts, even with the small amount of water that covers the granite reef. Yet in a geographical marvel that makes the wave one of Cape Town’s premier (and most well-protected) barrels, the onshore winds accelerate off the 3000-feet-high mountain capes behind it, form shadow zones over the leeward bays, and create cyclonic vorticity. 

Or in surfer’s terms, the mountains turn the howling onshore into a brisque offshore, holding up the powerful swells that fold over the shallow reef and allow neoprene-clad hunters to be spat into the kemp-clogged channel. Who’da thought vorticity could be so much fun?

Lakey Peak

Hardcore Lakey Peak aficionados (easily identified by the tattoo of the year of their first visit and skin cancer scars) will always advise that Indonesia’s early and late season is the only time to hit Sumbawa’s third best wave. 

Unlike Bali’s Bukit or G-Land, the dry season’s southeast tradewinds that swing in by midday (or before) catch Lakey at the wrong angle, ruffling the texture and shifting its axis out of its symmetrical, Pipeline-adjacent perfection. 

And yet, while the morning offshore sessions (no wave in Indo has more surfers paddling out on dark), and the mythical evening glass-off sessions are preferable, Lakey handles the onshore better than its reputation suggests. 

On the more playful right, the trades offer crumbling lips for turns and some of the best ramps, and landings, for those with the ability to surf above the water. But we’re not writing for Rasta Robb. 

On the left, the two barrel sections do indeed crumble under the weight of the onshore wind. Yet in their place is a slightly softer entry and clean(ish) walls with multiple turn opportunities in their place — just make sure you take the second or third wave of the set.

The biggest bonus is that these textured waves are largely left alone by the intense crowd that likes to only chase the 5-star glassy Lakey Experience. 

But if the wind is really that bad ( sometimes it is), just paddle 300 meters to Lakey Pipe, where it’s always magically offshore. 

Superbank

“In an ideal world at Snapper, it would be a mid-period, dead-straight, four-to-six foot east swell with light, southwest, offshore winds,” said Joel Parkinson. “And if we are creating an ideal world, there’s no crowd.” 

The remarkable thing is that Parko’s dreamscape — the swell and wind bit at least — happen all too regularly on the Gold Coast. 

And yet the Superbank has many, many modes apart from sheer perfection. The south-to- southeast swells, generated from the Tasman Sea from April to September, often come with stronger winds from the same direction. On these days, the whole coast can be a ravaged mess of salt-and-bluebottle-laden onshores that tear the beaches to shreds. Even just outside Snapper Rocks, it can look like a dog’s breakfast. 

And yet, due to the Gold Coast’s sand super-highway, a natural phenomenon that has had 20 years of augmented road maintenance from the Tweed River bypass, turns the dog’s breakfast  into the world’s best surf burrito. 

The wave bends into the protected bay, the shallow bank wipes the slate clean, and despite the onshy, six-second barrels are still possible. Add the increased sweep that adds some (relative) crowd control and it might not be dreamy, but on any given day, miracles can still happen. 

Haleiwa

“I’ve had hundreds of memorable days at Haleiwa,” said Michel Bourez, “but I can only recall a handful of straight offshore days out there. One stands out when I won the event and qualified. It was howling south-east with spray off the back of the waves, which was kinda weird. And that was in 2009!”

The southernmost North Shore break isn’t known for its pencil-case drawing perfection. So much water moves through the Haleiwa harbour and the Avalanche channel, that even if the trades blew straight offshore (which they don’t) the wave would always remain in a constant state of churn. 

The water forced in by the powerful northwest swells reverses back not through a clear channel. Instead, it is diverted by the inside Toilet Bowl reef section and straight up the finger of the shallow reef where the wave breaks. This is a rip that can suck you straight to hell; forever trying to pin you 10 metres on the wrong side of six-wave-sets whose only goal is to deprive you of oxygen. 

On the plus side, it is this rip that serves to turn the break into a beachbreak rip bowl on the roids. Like Soup Bowl, the side-onshore trade winds lack the strength or will to affect the rip and swell combo. Waves become clean after takeoff, and throaty barrels laugh in the face of their would-be oppressor. 

Onshore or not (or perhaps because of it), the result is the North Shore’s premier performance big wave.