Le Bec à Chéry 48.9

#4139 of 5756 surf spots in the world · 🇧🇱 Saint Barthélemy · Saint Barthélemy · near Basseterre

Works almost every day, wind is the enemy here, no off season.

Best time to surf Le Bec à Chéry

The best time to surf Le Bec à Chéry is January, March, September. It rarely works. In September the water sits around 30°C, so pack boardshorts, and the typical wave is 1.2 m. The nearest airport is SXM (30 km) and the nearest town is Basseterre (70 km).

What is under Le Bec à Chéry

Eight kilometres out along its swell window the sea floor drops to 158 m, shoaling steadily over the last kilometres. Alongside the bank the survey finds a channel, 517 m against 158 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 48.9

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 305° with 75% open water around it. Friendly morning wind 96% of days. Mean peak period 6.9 s. Days over 3 m: 0%. On its best tenth of days it reaches 1.9 m, with a peak period of 8 s. Mellow days (0.4 to 1.2 m): 28%. Months that work: 12 of 12. Coordinates 17.920, -62.860 (OpenStreetMap).

What it costs to be here

Remote spot, so the local estimate is 15% below the country average. Estimate: World Bank PPP price level for Saint Barthélemy (2025, United States = 1.00) (no separate series, so we scale FR) 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.

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