Where to Go in February: Best Watersports Bases

by Yannick SchrothAug 5, 20267 min read

Photo: Andi saiful Sidik via Pexels (free license).

What February gives you on the water

February rewards people who plan around animals rather than weather, and this list is ordered that way. February is peak season for several very specific animals. It is the strongest month on this site for manta aggregations and for Caribbean visibility, and the last dependable month before Red Sea winds build. Every base here is included because its own guide names February as part of its working window, not because the weather is generally nice, and where a place is marginal we say so rather than padding the list to a round number.

Also good in February

• La Ventana and Mui Ne, both mid-season for wind.
• Roatan, where February to April tends to be the calmest stretch.
• The White Nile and Tena, both in their drier, clearer December to February window.

February is the calmest month the tropics have, and the shortest day you will get there

February shares the year's quietest slot with January and March. On the Japan Meteorological Agency's 1991–2020 normals, the western North Pacific produces 0.3 tropical storms or stronger in February, roughly one February in three sees a single named system, and the other two see none. The agency has been keeping that table since 1951, so the number is drawn from seventy-five Februaries rather than a good run of recent ones. That is the whole argument for Khao Lak and the Similans, for Raja Ampat, and for the Visayas in February.

What you trade for it is daylight. At Khao Lak's latitude the US Naval Observatory has the sun up at 06:47 and down at 18:34 on 1 February, which is 11 hours 47 minutes, stretching only to 11 hours 57 by the 28th. Near the equator the day barely moves all year, and that cuts both ways: you will never lose the light the way you do at home, and you will never gain a long evening session either. Two dives and a sunset, and the day is done.