Hurghada
Wind, schools and cheap lessons in and around the city — less refined than El Gouna, considerably cheaper, and more variable.
- Season
- Best roughly April to September, with usable days year-round.
- Wind
- North to north-west, with more turbulence near the built-up areas.
- Launch
- Various, mostly attached to hotels along the northern strip and out towards El Gouna. Quality of the launch varies enormously.
Hurghada has wind and has schools, and it is the cheapest place on the coast to take a lesson. What it does not have is a single good beach the way El Gouna does — conditions vary a lot between launches, and some of them are genuinely poor.
Choose the centre rather than the city. A good Hurghada school on a good stretch is excellent value; a cheap one on a gusty hotel beach is a bad week.
Suits
- Riders on a budget
- Anyone already staying in Hurghada who wants sessions rather than a kite holiday
- Combining kiting with everything else the city has
Hazards
- Wind quality is the issue. Buildings and hotel blocks produce gusty, turbulent air at some launches that simply does not exist at Mangroovy.
- Boat traffic near the marina and the day-trip departure points.
- Reef and shallow coral at several spots — local knowledge matters more here than anywhere else on the coast.
Also in this bay — Hurghada
Dive sites
- Careless ReefIntermediate
Two pinnacles north-east of Giftun with a dramatic drop-off, long known for moray eels and for currents that decide the dive plan.
- Sha’ab Abu NuhasIntermediate
A shallow reef at the mouth of the Gulf of Suez that has claimed at least four ships — the Giannis D, Carnatic, Chrisoula K and Kimon M — all divable in a day.
- SS ThistlegormAdvanced
A British armed merchant ship sunk by air attack in 1941, still holding its wartime cargo of motorcycles, trucks and rifles. Widely considered one of the best wreck dives in the world.
- Giftun IslandsBeginner
Hurghada’s house reefs: a cluster of sheltered sites in a protected area, where most of the coast’s divers make their first Red Sea dive.
Wrecks
- SS ThistlegormIntermediate
A British war freighter still loaded with the equipment of an army that never received it — motorcycles, trucks, rifles and two railway locomotives — and the best-known wreck dive in the world outside Truk Lagoon.
- Giannis DIntermediate
The most photographed wreck at Abu Nuhas, and the most disorienting: the whole stern section lies canted hard over, so every corridor inside it runs at an angle your inner ear refuses to accept.
- SS CarnaticIntermediate
A Victorian P&O steamer that has been on the reef since 1869, so thoroughly colonised that her ribs now read as architecture rather than as a ship. The oldest wreck dived on this coast.
- Chrisoula KBeginner
The one carrying Italian floor tiles, still stacked in the holds forty years later. The shallowest and most forgiving wreck at Abu Nuhas, and the one novice wreck divers should meet first.
- Kimon MAdvanced
Carrying lentils from Turkey to India when she hit the reef in 1978. The deepest and least visited of the Abu Nuhas wrecks, because she sits where the weather does.
- Rosalie MollerTechnical
The Thistlegorm’s forgotten sister in the same story: bombed by the same squadron two nights later, sunk in the same anchorage, and left almost perfectly intact in 50m — which is why almost nobody sees her.
Snorkelling
- Giftun IslandsBoat trip
Hurghada’s standard day trip, and for good reason: proper coral gardens in a protected area, 45 minutes out of the marina.
The town guide for Hurghada