Vietnam’s central coast showed its teeth at the end of October when Category 5 Super Typhoon Champi lashed its shores. Offshore wave buoys read 13- to 20-footers off parts of the country’s central coast, and points and beaches from Da Nang to Nha Trang lit up for a couple of days of unforgettable swell—something that doesn’t tend to factor into the itinerant surf travelers’ considerations. But feast your eyes on this grainy but froth-worthy footage from someone who had their feet on that slightly obscure yet hallowed surfing ground and try and tell us Vietnam still isn’t on your list.
Champi was the strongest northwestern Pacific storm of the year, reaching Category 5 intensity on October 20, with sustained winds around 185 mph, according to NASA. It sent an 18-second east-northeast pulse with nearly double-overhead sets, according to Surf-Forecast.com‘s models—something of which the late Robert Duvall‘s Apocalypse Now character Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore might have thought he could have only dreamt—and napalm-free, at that.
Most of the surf Vietnam (and eastern-facing shores the world over) sees is windswell, generated by seasonal northeast monsoons from about October to April, which produce consistent if middling tradeswell. Think the dog-days of summer in the North Atlantic along the U.S.’s East Coast. It’s the sort of windswept slop many of us associate with much of the region—surfable, but a far cry from a surf destination, most of the time anyhow.
So what of this (relatively) huge pulse, and why don’t we see more images of freight-training points and stand-up tubes coming from the Land of the Blue Dragon? In short, Vietnam’s coast, and particularly its central coast, where Da Nang is located, particularly likes an east-northeast swell window. It’s a direction that can deliver longer-period energy from offshore tropical cyclones, as well as the more routine northeast-monsoon waves. The geography makes things complicated, though: swell has to negotiate the islands and landmasses of the South China Sea, including Hainan, China, which can obstruct some northerly approaches and leave the optimal swell window relatively narrow.
The time for finding heaving beauties in Vietnam is, of course, now. September, October, and November are particularly interesting months for tropical cyclone activity in the western North Pacific, with autumn storms accounting for a disproportionate share of the basin’s intense typhoons and super typhoons, according to research published in Geoscience Letters. They can create longer-period groundswells for Taiwan, the Philippines, and, with just the right direction, Vietnam, too. Vietnam’s central-coast surf season generally runs from September through December, with October and November especially promising.
So don’t sleep on Southeast Asia’s Rising Star. The Rice Bowl of the World serves up some hardy bowls of a more aqueous composition, too. A look at the forecast suggests there’s even more on tap. Fancy a last-minute strike mission? We should all be so lucky to have the time and bread. By all means, bag up that Yater Spoon and get to booking a flight. Just be a good tourist and leave your napalm at home.
Related: How Robert Duvall, the Vietnam War, and a Yater Spoon Changed Surfing
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