BLUFF 48.8

#4146 of 5756 surf spots in the world · 🇵🇦 Panama · Bocas del Toro · near Bocas del Toro

Very consistent, wind is the enemy here, peaks in January.

Best time to surf BLUFF

The best time to surf BLUFF is January, June. It rarely works. In January the water sits around 28°C, so pack boardshorts, and the typical wave is 1.1 m. The nearest airport is DAV (116 km) and the nearest town is Bocas del Toro (10 km).

What is under BLUFF

Eight kilometres out along its swell window the sea floor drops to 152 m, shoaling steadily over the last kilometres. Alongside the bank the survey finds a channel, 1079 m against 152 m, deep enough to bend swell onto one peak instead of spreading it along the beach.

Measured, not estimated: NOAA ETOPO 2022 global relief at 15 arc-seconds, about 460 m per cell, sampled along this spot’s own swell window. At that scale the survey sees passes and channels; it cannot see a reef ledge, so nothing here is said about how the wave breaks.

Why 48.8

Seven parts, each normalised 0 to 1 and multiplied by its weight; the sum is scaled so the best spot in the world scores 100. Wave quality and what the spot does on its best days carry more than half of it, which is what separates this from a ranking of where the water is warm.

The detail

Faces 55° with 53% open water around it. Friendly morning wind 90% of days. Mean peak period 7.7 s. Days over 3 m: 0%. On its best tenth of days it reaches 1.3 m, with a peak period of 9 s. Mellow days (0.4 to 1.2 m): 83%. Months that work: 10 of 12. Coordinates 9.424, -82.256 (OpenStreetMap).

What it costs to be here

Estimate: World Bank PPP price level for Panama (2025, United States = 1.00) applied to a fixed surfer basket, then adjusted for how remote the spot is. Your own number moves with the season and how you live.

Spots nearby