About · Method · Disclosure
About this guide
Essaouira Kite Guide is a free, English-language trip planner for kitesurfers heading to Essaouira, Morocco. It turns ten years of public climate data into month-by-month advice, and it recommends one local school for lessons. Every statistic and price on the site comes from a cited source.
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Who runs this guide?
The guide is a small editorial project focused on one destination. It carries no advertising or tracking scripts, and the interactive tools run in your browser and send nothing anywhere.
Disclosure
This guide has a commercial relationship with Essaouira Watersports, an IKO-certified kitesurf, wingfoil and surf school in Essaouira. It exists partly to send kite travellers its way: the “lessons” and “packages” boxes link to the school, and the cost estimator uses its published prices. We say this up front so you can weigh those recommendations.
The wind, sea and travel information is not tuned to flatter Essaouira. The comparison page shows, for example, that Dakhla is windier in every month of the data.
Where does the data come from?
Wind and air temperature
ERA5 reanalysis (Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF), 2015-01-01 to 2024-12-31, fetched hourly through the Open-Meteo Historical Weather API with wind in knots at 10 m above the surface.
- Mean daytime wind: the average wind between 11:00 and 18:00 local time, averaged over every day of the month in the period.
- Days ≥ 12 kn and ≥ 15 kn: the share of days whose 11:00–18:00 mean wind reached that speed.
- Wind direction: of the daytime hours with at least 8 knots, the share coming from each of eight compass sectors. Only the three most common sectors are stored, so shares may not add up to 100%.
- Air temperature: the mean of each day's daytime maximum at 2 m.
Sea temperature and waves
Open-Meteo Marine API (ECMWF WAM / Copernicus Marine models), period 2022-01-01 to 2024-12-31. Monthly means of hourly sea surface temperature, significant wave height and mean wave period at the nearest offshore model cell. Offshore model values; wave height at the beach depends on the spot, tide and bathymetry.
Grid points used
| Place | Wind / air point | Sea / wave point |
|---|---|---|
| Essaouira | 31.500, -9.770 | 31.500, -9.800 |
| Moulay Bouzerktoun | 31.645, -9.680 | 31.645, -9.700 |
| Sidi Kaouki | 31.355, -9.800 | 31.355, -9.820 |
| Dakhla | 23.800, -15.850 | 23.700, -16.000 |
| Tarifa | 36.020, -5.620 | not fetched |
Known limits
- ERA5 is a ~25-30 km reanalysis grid; it smooths local thermal and coastal acceleration, so measured beach winds are often stronger. Use the data to compare months and spots, not as a promise.
- Essaouira and Moulay Bouzerktoun fall in the same ERA5 grid cell, so their numbers are identical.
- ERA5 strongly underestimates Tarifa's Levante, which is funnelled through the Strait of Gibraltar.
- Sea values are offshore model values. Conditions at the beach depend on the spot, tide and bathymetry.
- Wetsuit thicknesses are our recommendation, not a rule.
Prices
Lesson prices are those published by Essaouira Watersports and were checked against its website on 20 October 2026; they are per person. Package prices (Hostel, Maison du Sud and Riad Zahra Authentic, for one person or two people sharing) were read from the school's packages page on the same date. Prices change, so the estimator always points you to the school's own pages for current prices. Flights, food and other costs are never estimated: you enter them yourself.
What we leave out on purpose
- Reviews, ratings, testimonials and visitor counts.
- Bus timetables, fares and airline schedules, which change too often to keep accurate.
- Anything we could not check against a primary source.
Licence and attribution
Weather data by Open-Meteo.com, licensed under CC BY 4.0. ERA5 reanalysis is produced by ECMWF for the Copernicus Climate Change Service. A plain-text summary of this site for AI assistants is at /llms.txt.
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