Atlantic Star Nautical Center Live Cam

Santa Maria beach runs along the southern tip of Sal, the flattest and driest of the Cape Verde islands. The camera belongs to a watersports centre and looks down the sand past the catamarans.

The trade wind blows here on almost every day of the year and the island is too low to break it, which is what brought the kitesurfers. Between January and April it rarely drops below fifteen knots.

Sal is named for its salt: pans inside the crater at Pedra de Lume were worked from the eighteenth century and shipped out until the trade collapsed. The water stays warm enough to sail in all year, and it almost never rains.