Its amazing to me how little wind it takes to bother when you smoke hookah. Just a little air movement and I can’t even¬† use my lighter to fire up a quick lighting charcoal, let alone with a match.
Often I’ve forgone using my fan even¬† on a hot day.
The answer for lighting a charcoal at the beach or outside and keep the heat from the coal  flying off in a very light breeze is a wind cover. You can get nice heavy duty tin ones online. They are quite cheap and made to fit the tobacco ash-tray exactly.
I use a heavy-duty aluminum foil cover such the likes as a used aluminum meat roast cooking pan, or buy the  heavy foil in a roll like regular  aluminum. It must be the heavy duty type or it will blow over just as easily as the coals will, dumping your shisha, the burning coal and probably breaking the ceramic bowl.
Take the aluminum tray and flatten down the sides, but be careful of jagged edges when you do that. Bend the edges over and make yourself a circular¬† roll as high as you want it I made mine 7.5 inches high for the large hookah. Keep in mind that it can’t be¬† a larger circumference than the ash- tray itself. I use on my large hookah a very large round¬† aluminum pie tray with a hole cut large enogh in the middle to let it over the shaft but not too much so that it won’t catch ashes. It might not be so pretty, but it holds my gigantic wind cover and catches all ashes so they don’t fall on the rug, or onto the hookah.
The circumference of my wind screen cover is  15 inches, the heigth  7.5 inches with a 4.5 inch diameter.Does a great job of keeping the  coal heat right there where I want it.
It can also be fashioned funnel shape with the diameter smaller at the top.
At the beach you won’t want to drag along a piece of large aluminum¬† foil. Get a tin can and cut out the top and bottom. You are finished. It won’t fly away in the wind. Its also a good size for mini and junior sized hookahs.
Or…check the wind direction and sit behind an outside wall–hopefully in the sun or shade if its too hot out!
Hookah 1