Sfax Marine Weather - Waves, Wind & Gusts

Tunisia's second city, Sfax is first and foremost a sea town: its port combines busy commercial traffic with one of the country's leading fishing harbours. Trawlers, sardine boats and coastal craft share the water with cargo ships and the ferry that links the city several times a day to the Kerkennah Islands, some twenty kilometres offshore.

Sfax's sailing area lies in the Gulf of Gabès, a singular sea within the Mediterranean: very shallow over a wide area, it experiences one of the largest tidal ranges in the entire Mediterranean, with wide flats uncovered at low tide. It is also home to charfia fishing, the traditional palm-frond fixed fisheries of Kerkennah inscribed on UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list.

Sfax enjoys one of the calmest seas in Tunisia: the shallow Gulf of Gabès prevents large swells from building, and waves rarely exceed 1.5 metres. This page tracks wind speed in km/h and knots, direction, gusts and wave height continuously, refreshed every 30 minutes.

The wind regime is ruled by the thermal breeze in summer: an afternoon sea breeze, calm mornings and evenings - the window fishermen favour. In spring and autumn, easterly winds can raise a short chop over the shallows, more annoying than dangerous. The sirocco (chehili), a hot southerly wind, blows a few days a year and cuts visibility at sea with airborne sand and dust.

From April to October the sea is mostly smooth to slight: the high season for coastal fishing and for comfortable crossings to Kerkennah. The gulf's shallow waters warm quickly and stay above 25°C all summer.

In winter, trips remain frequent because the area is sheltered from the big northern swells, but easterly blows and morning haze call for extra care. Before heading out, check the navigability index at the top of the page and the 48-hour gust trend, and factor in the tide, which is noticeable over the gulf's shallows.