sea conditions ? taking the guess work out of it

[Dino89]

was wondering how to know or find reliable information when the sea is going to be good for boating in advance ,is there an app ?
nothing worse than getting out and finding the seas really pretty rough, even though its seemed a nice day
want to take the guess work out of it , any ideas thanks

[Pikey Dave]

Originally Posted by Dino89

was wondering how to know or find reliable information when the sea is going to be good for boating in advance ,is there an app ?

nothing worse than getting out and finding the seas really pretty rough, even though its seemed a nice day

want to take the guess work out of it , any ideas thanks

Experience based on available information. Too many variables.
Wind - strength & direction
Tide - strength & direction
The weather,
thousands of miles away in the Atlantic.
The weather last week.
Air temperature & pressure.
Geography of the area.

If it was as easy as just getting an app, it would be… err… ummm….easy!

[Dino89]

thanks for that , thought it may be complex as i go down coast suns out,wind seems calm yet sea is kicking other days its calm and not that great weather wise , i do remember being told in dawlish never to go out in a certain wind direction was either easterly or westerly but cant remember that either

guess its keep popping down on day and making a judgement call then.

[treerat]

I use 3 things,
Wind guru - this gives a really good steer on what's going to be happening out there.

Knowledge, gained from all that is in Pikey's response - for my area I sort of know how long it'll take to settle or where we can go depending on wind and weather.

Web cam - if all else fails I check the local web cams before leaving as this confirms my thoughts based on the two above.

The more often you go some where with a known weather window the easier that guess work gets.

That said it'll not be the first time we've driven an hour or so to have coffee and come back!!

[Pipster100]

What PD says

I work offshore, we spend hundreds of thousands on forecasts, they are what they say, a 'forecast' not actual, they give you ballpark weather and thats it. Even if you found an app I wouldn't trust it.

[Steve509926]

I use a combination of 4 things:-

Met office forecast
Meteo weather
Bouyweather
and my own eyes (very short term forecast)

I find Bouyweather the best for wind and sea state, but all can be wildly inaccurate.
For example, at Trearddur on Wednesday, all 3 stated the wind would be 4 - 5 k NNW in the morning, 2 - 3 k W in the afternoon, ideal for when & where I wanted to launch from and go back to taking tides into account. All day it was blowing 7 - 10 k WSW, wind over tide in the morning, needless to say eyeball weather forecast won that day.

[Sutty]

I use NCI lookout info and use the actual not the forecast. I am not usually more than 2 hours from base so the sea is very unlikely to change from calm to hurricane in that time.

[ThundercatRob]

Have a look at Windy. I use it for work and its always similar to the paid for forecasts.

You need to understand sea types, wave period etc and how it will affect whatever boat you're in.

You could also use CEFAS Wavenet https://wavenet.cefas.co.uk/map and see if any of the buoys are local to your area. Each buoy has a prediction as well. Usually good for general conditions.

[lakelandterrier]

All of te above but best of all local knowedge & experience

If you're at Dawlish an Easterly is the worst wind as it blows the sea straight onto the shore from far out. A westerly will be coming from the land so won't create such big seas fro the same wind strength.

Even local BBC forecast will give a good idea of local inshore conditions, the stronger the wind the lumpier it will be as a general rule. Conditions can however be very local - horrible at one point, them calm.

It is a complex combimation of wind, tide, current depth, and what it was doing 24 hours or more earlier. You also need to have an eye open for what it is GOINGto do whilst you are out!

Local harbour / NCI webcams are a good source of what's actually happening....although by the time you get there it my be different

[Pikey Dave]

In my experience if you made your boating decisions purely on the forecast, you might get out a couple of days a year. We live 60 miles from the coast (about as far as you can get in GB) and if we followed the forecasts we’d hardly bother setting off. I recall once launching at Ferrybridge on Portland on a glorious flat day & there was a gale warning in place. The guy at Ferrybridge quite rightly questioned our decision, we went anyway. Half way down Portland Bill the CG came on the radio & cancelled the gale warning. We had a fantastic day on glass smooth seas. Sometimes that’s just the way it goes.
The flip side to that, is early in my boating life, we went to launch at Whitby. The forecast was a NE3-4, which didn’t sound too bad. I learned that day to avoid Whitby with anything with an easterly & ebbing tide. The harbour mouth can get “sporty” in those conditions.

[jeffstevens763@g]

Magic seaweed surf forecasts are pretty good , weedale hotel in Whitby has a web cam with the east coast the wind can be low but you get a big ground swell at times so web cams are good. I use to dive Redcar a lot I bought crabs off a local fisherman got to know him and gave him a ring before going up worked well

[Steve509926]

Originally Posted by jeffstevens763@g

I bought crabs off a local fisherman

Got those a long time ago, but not from a local fisherman

[Dino89]

Thanks for all the responses , will try local webcam Exmouth has one and remember now it's Easterly to be avoided

[spartacus]

If you’re fixed to a particular day, due to passenger commitments then that’s an added pressure.

It’s rarely flat calm in Scotland so F2-F4 is comfortable on the North Sea, I study the forecast for 3-4 days before I’m due to launch with a favourable tide of course. Normally it’s anywhere from F4-6 first thing. I’ve boated on the west coast, so F6 if the Atlantic is a different ball game, and one to avoid.

XC weather and MET office forecast and even BBC coastal. Add it all into the mix and have a contingency plan.

Don’t be afraid to call off. There’s too much work preparing the boat and of course cost to haul it to the coast in the vain hope the weather forecast was wrong.

[gtflash]

Just spent a week in pentewan sands in Cornwall. I asked the local surfer dude and he said not today it looks spikey.

The I asked the tractor launcher lady and she said. Stay away from easterlies and south westerlies. Or northerlies if on a paddle board.

The wind changed by the hour but no wind over tide mattered there like it does round my way. Local knowledge is brilliant. Windfinder is good (if old school) to show wave height and periodicity as is magic seaweed or Willy weather.

[Herman Melville]

I live 50m from the sea and work from home. I see the sea pretty much all the time and am often out on it in my rib.

Moat forecasts and apps, especially for sea state are very very poor. I mean shockingly poor. Most days they bear little resemblance to what is actually happening.

Windy.com is the worst of all. How they have to gaul to publish it I am not sure.

If you must use a forecast / app then for inshore waters magicseaweed is one of the better ones.

Start by watching out for stable high pressure and low winds. Avoid strong tidal flow against the wind (remember that tidal flow and tide height are not the same thing). Avoid afternoons..... etc etc...

[Poly]

Originally Posted by Herman Melville

Windy.com is the worst of all. How they have to gaul to publish it I am not sure.

Interesting. I've generally found Windy to be reasonably accurate up here. obviously the longer in the future the forecast the less likely to be accurate but I'm currently looking at it for this weekend and next week and feel pretty confident that the weekend will be OK, gets a bit worse at the start of the week and by Wed eve / Thurs AM could be ugly before improving again at the ned of the week. Do I believe that the storm will blow through at 0100 thurs a week ahead - no, but if I remember I'll post back at the end of the week and confirm what happens.

Avoid afternoons..... etc etc...

OK - you are going to have to elaborate on that one... I'm guessing you are talking about the effects of the sun warming up and causing the wind speed to increase. Do you notice that in England? Maybe we don't get enough sun but I can't say I've really seen it up here. The katabatic winds off the mountains are more of an issue for me.

[Herman Melville]

Hi Poly,

My experience on the south coast is that you almost always see wind generated waves come up in the afternoon from the sea breeze. it doesn't seem to need to be hugely sunny to do this. Also by 7pm those waves have pretty much gone.

Very often a morning or evening trip is the most pleasant. My presonal preference is the 5/6am to 10am time - in my view the best part of the day and the best time pon the water.

it's not always the case of course but a reasonably good trend.

I think things are very local. So for example in a mild south westerly airstream the eastern side of the IoW is often nice. But if you get high pressure over the scotland, north sea area like we did last Aug then it pulls air down in clockwise direction and drives it straight into that eastern side of the Island making it quite miserable. I remember it well and it was proper crap.