Priority, paddling wide, dropping in, and respecting local surfers — useful, linkable, and it makes our guests better in the water.
Surfing has one real rule and a handful of conventions built on top of it. Learn them in ten minutes and you will be welcome anywhere. Ignore them and you will have a bad time in the water without quite understanding why.
None of this applies to your first whitewater lesson — you will be on a beach with an instructor and nobody else's waves to ruin. It starts to matter the moment you paddle out to a line-up.
The one rule: priority
The surfer closest to the breaking part of the wave has right of way. Everyone else gets off, paddles around, or does not go.
That is it. Everything else is a consequence of it.
Taking a wave someone else already has is called dropping in, and it is the one thing that genuinely angers people. It is not a minor faux pas — it ruins their wave and it can hurt somebody.
If you are unsure whether a wave is yours, it is not yours. There will be another one.
Paddling out
Go around, never through. Paddle wide of the breaking waves, even if it is longer. Paddling straight through the middle of the peak puts you directly in the path of anyone riding.
If you are caught inside and somebody is coming at you, paddle towards the white water, behind them — not towards the open face they are heading for. Counter-intuitive, and it is the correct move.
Hold onto your board
Never let go and dive under if there is anyone behind you. A loose board on a leash is a two-metre projectile with a fin on it.
This is also why beginners use soft-tops, and why you should keep a genuine distance from other people in the water while you are still falling a lot.
The unwritten ones
- Do not snake. Repeatedly paddling around someone to claim inside position is technically legal and universally resented.
- Apologise. If you drop in by accident, say so. Almost every conflict in the water de-escalates instantly with a raised hand and a sorry.
- Do not paddle straight to the peak. Sit wider, catch a few, work your way in. Turning up and immediately taking the best position is how visitors get a reputation.
- Respect the locals. They surf here every day. You are here for a week.
Localism in Morocco, honestly
You will encounter it, particularly at the famous point breaks around Taghazout. Anchor Point can hold eighty surfers on a good winter day, and local surfers have priority — that is normal at good waves anywhere in the world, and the culture around it here can feel direct if you are not used to it.
It is not hostility toward visitors. It is a crowded resource with an established order, and beginners sit at the bottom of it. Which is exactly why we do not teach there, and why we take beginners to the sandy beach breaks instead.
When you are ready for the points, go early, sit wide, catch the scraps for a session or two, and be polite. Nobody minds a visitor who behaves like a guest.
The short version
Do not take someone else's wave. Do not paddle through the middle. Hold your board. Say sorry when you get it wrong.
Get those four right and you will be treated well in any line-up on this coast.
Learning from scratch? Start on the beach breaks around Tamraght, where you can make every mistake in the book without anyone caring.