The report · Sakalava Bay · Kite · April · 6 pages
Diego Suarez, Madagascar
Sakalava Bay
78% of April days clear 12 kt for three daylight hours or more.
Hour-by-hour & month-by-month wind
Rideable-day share by month, all three sports
Share of days with three or more daylight hours over each sport's threshold, counted from the record at 12 kt, Windsurf 13 kt and Wing 12 kt.
Blue fill scales with the share. Selected month outlined. Threshold per row: Kite 12 kt · Windsurf 13 kt · Wing 12 kt.
Where the wind sits, April
Share of daylight hours in each speed band, blue above the threshold.
Not drawn: 4% of daylight hours under 4 kt.
When in the day, April
Share of days over 12 kt at each daylight hour. The trades are a clock. A dawn session is a different spot.
Rideable hours, not all hours. Every wind figure in this report is the mean over hours above the threshold.
April's own records
The month's own figures from ten Aprils in the record, 2017 to 2026. Not the year's average.
What the percentage hides. A month at 80% can be twenty-four steady days or three windy weeks broken by a dead front.
Full stays, schools & kit
Stays
Lessons
Kit
Price band $ to $$$ only where sourced; none shown means none held. Contact details and brands stocked join this table when the operator directory is connected.
Per-launch tide notes
Mirror-flat and shallow at low tide, choppier at high tide in strong wind. Hours per tide state unknown until tide data arrives.
Shows at low tide, with standing depth over most of the bay for four to six hours.
KiteParadise: the wave zone comes alive at medium and high tide.
Tide data not yet available for this spot. The record holds wind, air and waves, not tide. Until a tide source is connected, the tables above stay empty rather than estimated. What the guide says about tide is on the next page, in words.
Reef, sandbanks & no public rescue
Every hazard on the spot page, repeated here in full. Read this before you get wet.
Conditions change. Check local rules and conditions before you ride.
Waves break on the reef at the bay entrance, a few hundred metres out; KiteParadise puts the break at 500 m from the shore. At low tide a sandbank shows, and Kite Insider warns that low-tide sandbanks and shallow areas can be grounding hazards, especially at speed or on foil. The tide range runs from about 40 cm to 2.5 to 3 m.
Kite Insider says there is no public lifeguard and no municipal rescue service: cover on the water depends on whichever school or lodge you are riding in front of. KiteParadise says the zone near the mangrove is flat at low tide but has a lot of turbulence in the whole area. Kite Insider gives the cyclone and monsoon period as roughly December to March, generally outside the kite season.
Getting there, packing & best months
Derived from the 16 to 18 kt mean over the season’s rideable hours in the record, April to October, not from a fitted quiver.
Best months, Kite. Record.
Sources, and their limits
Where each section of this report comes from. Record is measured. Modelled is computed by a formula because no measurement exists yet; it looks like data and is not. Written is WindChaser's editorial copy, compiled from the sources below.
The record
Hourly wind, 2017 to 2026, from ECMWF IFS HRES via Open-Meteo: a 9 km grid, read at the cell 1.9 km from the spot. It knows the wind over the cell, not the gust on the sand in front of you, and it knows the bearing, not the coastline: "side-onshore" is a rider's reading of the bearing. Each month is counted over nine to ten years.
What we could not source for Sakalava Bay
A counted crowd reading: the crowd rows are compiled research. Emergency numbers from an official source. A water quality classification, and a first-hand reading of the local vibe. Tide tables and per-launch tide windows. A station check on the wind record. Surveyed launch coordinates. Licensed photographs. Where any of these is missing above, the section says so rather than filling itself.
Conditions change. Check local rules and conditions before you ride.
Compiled by WindChaser, 25 Sep 2026. Hero photograph on the spot page by Chirocca77, CC BY 4.0. Report generated 22 Oct 2026 from record version 2026.10; a report and its spot page are rendered from the same data and cannot disagree.