Pine Cay 63.1

#2882 of 5756 surf spots in the world · 🇹🇨 Turks and Caicos Islands · Providenciales and West Caicos · near Grand Turk

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

Best time to surf Pine Cay

The best time to surf Pine Cay is January, September, October. It rarely works. In September the water sits around 30°C, so pack boardshorts, and the typical wave is 1.3 m. The nearest airport is GDT (110 km) and the nearest town is Grand Turk (110 km).

What is under Pine Cay

Eight kilometres out along its swell window the sea floor falls away into open ocean, 520 m, deep right up to the door, so swell arrives with its energy intact. Alongside the bank the survey finds a channel, 726 m against 520 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 63.1

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 270° with 75% open water around it. Friendly morning wind 95% of days. Mean peak period 8.1 s. Days over 3 m: 1%. On its best tenth of days it reaches 2.0 m, with a peak period of 11 s. Mellow days (0.4 to 1.2 m): 37%. Months that work: 12 of 12. Coordinates 21.864, -72.111 (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 Turks and Caicos Islands (2024, 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.