About
About Cape Wave Check
Cape Wave Check is a Cape Town surf and kite conditions website built around one core problem: the drive to the beach when you do not know whether it is worth it. Anyone who has surfed or kited in Cape Town regularly has done it — left the house based on a general weather app, arrived at the beach to find the wind completely wrong or the swell too big or too small, and made the drive back having barely got in the water. Cape Wave Check exists to give that decision better information before you leave.
The site covers 20 surf and kite beaches across the Western Cape, from the Table Bay beaches in the north through the False Bay coast, the South Peninsula, and all the way up the West Coast to Strandfontein. Each beach has a dedicated page showing current wind speed and direction, wave height and period, water temperature, tide timing, and a practical verdict — go, wait, or skip — based on how those conditions combine for that specific spot.
Why we built it
Cape Town has an extraordinary surf and kite scene. Bloubergstrand is one of the most recognised kite destinations in the world. Muizenberg has been producing surfers for more than a century. Elands Bay is one of the more consistent left-hand points on the South African coast. And yet the information available to plan a session has historically been scattered across general weather apps, global surf forecast platforms designed for international audiences, and word of mouth from local surfers who knew what the specific wind shadow of Chapman's Peak does to Kommetjie, or what the Cape Doctor at 30 knots means for the difference between Big Bay and Bloubergstrand.
The goal with Cape Wave Check is to put useful, locally-calibrated information in one place — simple enough to read before you get in your car, detailed enough to actually help you make a better decision about where to go and when.
How the data works
Live conditions on Cape Wave Check are pulled from a combination of weather and marine data sources updated at regular intervals. Wind speed and direction, precipitation, and atmospheric data come from Open-Meteo, a high-resolution European weather model that runs forecasts at fine grid scales and is specifically well-suited to coastal and terrain-influenced conditions like the ones Cape Town produces. Wave height, wave period, and sea surface temperature come from Open-Meteo's marine model, which covers the South Atlantic and updates throughout the day.
Tide data uses WorldTides, a dedicated tide prediction service that draws on a global network of reference stations and produces precise high and low tide times for each of our beach locations. Tide timing matters significantly for surf quality in Cape Town — many breaks change character substantially between high and low water — and accurate tide times are worth having separately from a general marine forecast.
The verdicts on each beach page — go, wait, or skip — are generated by comparing the incoming conditions against threshold ranges for that specific beach. A surf-focused beach like Muizenberg is evaluated against different parameters than a kite-focused beach like Big Bay or Langebaan. The thresholds are calibrated against known local conditions rather than generic global surfing guidelines. They are starting-point recommendations, not guarantees — conditions change faster than forecasts update, and nothing replaces a look out the window before you leave or a scan of the shore when you arrive.
The beach guides
Beyond the live conditions, Cape Wave Check includes written guides to each of the 20 beaches on the site. These cover the things a data feed cannot tell you: where to park, what hazards to watch for, what tidal state each break prefers, what the crowd is typically like, and what nearby spots are worth checking as alternatives when your main choice is not working. These guides are written from local knowledge and updated when conditions or access change — corrections and additions from people who surf these beaches regularly are always welcome.
The area guides covering Bloubergstrand and Table Bay, Muizenberg and False Bay, the South Peninsula, and the West Coast go further — covering food, accommodation, things to do beyond surfing, and how to plan a day or multi-day trip around a surf or kite mission. Cape Town is a remarkable place to be based for surf travel, and the context around the beach often matters as much as the conditions at it.
Ocean safety
Cape Town's coastline is beautiful and genuinely demanding. The cold Benguela Current keeps Atlantic side water temperatures low year-round and produces powerful swells that can be deceptive — particularly for visitors used to warmer, more sheltered conditions. Rip currents are common at many Cape Town beaches and can be difficult to identify without local knowledge. Great white sharks are present in False Bay and along the Peninsula coast, and the Shark Spotters programme that operates at Muizenberg is not a reassuring formality — it is a functional safety system.
Cape Wave Check's verdicts are intended to help with the conditions decision before the session. They are not a substitute for reading the sea at the shore, understanding your own ability level, surfing with other people in remote or unfamiliar locations, or following any safety flags or instructions from lifeguards. The ocean is always in charge of the final word. Use this site to get to the right beach at the right time — and then use your own judgement and experience from there.
Get in touch
Cape Wave Check is maintained by a small team of surfers based in Cape Town. If something on a beach page is wrong, out of date, or missing — particularly local hazard information, access notes, or crowd details that only someone who surfs there regularly would know — please get in touch via the contact page. Local knowledge from actual surfers is the thing that improves these pages more than any data feed or model update, and corrections are genuinely useful.