Punto La Gillette 47.5

#4221 of 5756 surf spots in the world · 🇻🇪 Venezuela · Dependencias Federales · near Maiquetía

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

Best time to surf Punto La Gillette

The best time to surf Punto La Gillette is March, September, December. It rarely works. In September the water sits around 29°C, so pack boardshorts, and the typical wave is 1.1 m. The nearest airport is CCS (155 km) and the nearest town is Maiquetía (154 km).

What is under Punto La Gillette

Eight kilometres out along its swell window the sea floor falls away into open ocean, 1,246 m, deep right up to the door, so swell arrives with its energy intact.

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 47.5

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 300° with 97% open water around it. Friendly morning wind 100% of days. Mean peak period 6.3 s. Days over 3 m: 0%. On its best tenth of days it reaches 1.9 m, with a peak period of 7 s. Mellow days (0.4 to 1.2 m): 29%. Months that work: 12 of 12. Coordinates 11.954, -66.681 (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 Venezuela (own estimate, 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.