What is considered unsafe sea condition?

I know everyone have different tolerance for what is safe, but for a newbie, what is the threshold of wind speed, tidal coefficient, and swell conditions is an absolutely no go?  Is there a guideline for this?

For wind speed I try to avoid 11 MPH and over forecasts. This usually works for me just download the windy.com app and always look at the forecast before you go out.

I would say look into taking a class and then you will be better prepared to answer that question based on your skill level and tolerance for the conditions.

This is a good question and definitely represents a foundational consideration for this sport.

My best advice is to always try to go on forecasts that are significantly better than average - pretty vague, right?!  In order to become proficient at reading forecasts and maximizing your ability to get on the best water, you need to dedicate yourself to it.  Read the forecasts every day - start with something very general and regional like NWS/NOAA.  "Cape Mendocino to Pt. Arena out 10 nautical miles" is one I often look at.  Compare what they say to what you see, and also take note of how their forecast changes over the days prior to the day you're targeting - these tools are not perfect, and it's sometimes striking how much variability there is from one day to the next.  I too look for winds 10 knots or less, and swell hazard factor is largely dependent on where you're going, the period between swells and definitely the direction of the swell.  Add in multiple other forecast tools and compare all of them - Stormsurf, Windy.com, Magic Seaweed...  They're all different, and in combination they can shed much light on the overall trend.  See how they compare to each other - especially when they seem to be predicting much different outcomes.  Which one was right more often?

Here's the next factor to always consider:  when you get to the ocean and see the conditions, of course you compare them to what the forecast had predicted, but you ALWAYS consider how they could escalate.  If you see that it's do-able, but it seems marginal, you MUST consider that an escalation of the conditions could occur very quickly.  Being able to get on the water and safely navigate isn't black and white - you have to be ready for changes.

Last, we follow standards like dressing for immersion, carrying navigation and communication tools and redundancy in equipment because there are factors in this sport that can be deadly.  There are four big factors that we must always be ready for:  1)  weather/wind/sea changes - this is the most likely factor that could get you in trouble; 2)  equipment failure - drives break, paddles blow away, cracks develop or hatches leak; 3)  your body - be in tune with how you feel and what your abilities are - can you paddle for an hour or more at 60-80% in order to get back to safety?; and 4)  wild animals - what if a shark bites your yak, a sealion jumps on your bow or a nice fish pokes you?

Weather/wind/sea changes are by far the biggest wild card for us, so being a study of the tools available as well as observations of predicted versus what actually materialized is invaluable to what we're doing on the ocean.

Study the forecast tools every day and compare them to what you see or what the buoys ended up showing.

^^^ LoletaEric knows his stuff ^^^


There are many things you can peg your adventure too, surf/swell condition, wind & gust, timing (i.e. calm in the morning, angry in the afternoon), location characteristics (different area act differently to wind/gust/swell/surf, Bolinas is more remote than HMB [help is probably longer to come]), etc.


Forecast is a guideline, reality is fact.  You need to be able to abort if what you see make you uncomfortable.  Remember, safety first, fishing is just a bonus.


In addition to forecast, you also need to consider failure, injuries, and body conditions.


So, basically nothing new to what Eric said.

Some people peg their "safety condition" to swell (i.e. no bigger than 4ft), wind (i.e. no more than 15 mph), and gust (no more than 15mph), surf (no more than 3ft), and company (i.e. no launch if you are the only one).

At the end, it really depends on your ability, actual conditions, and your equipment (hull particulary, i.e. how fast/stable). 


You will figure it out with more experience.

Can't emphasize enough the value of reading forecasts everyday and comparing to what you see in reality. After a while, you learn that a particular service tends to err in one direction - overestimating or underestimating swell size, for example. Can't tell you how many times i've been at sea and swell was easily double what was forecast on that particular area. This is especially the case in breaking surf.

Also understand how swell period affects conditions. The longer the swell period, the more volume of water moving under each wave. It's harder to tell at sea, but when you're launching/landing, it becomes very real. All that water loads up on a sand bar, and you dont wanna be under it. So 4ft @ 17s is much much larger surf than 4ft @ 8s in breaking waves.

Also that's why the recommendation is to use multiple forecasts to have a good picture of what is likely to happen, and always pay attention and prepare for the worst forecast of the bunch. So if 2 of 3 says no wind all day, but one says wind will turn on at noon, plan for that.

I'll add some thought processes around swell and waves.  First, some definitions so we're on the same page.  You have a primary swell, a secondary swell, and wind waves.  In general swells are the waves that are created by distant weather systems while wind waves are those created by the local wind.
 Primary swell is the dominant wave force, i.e. the more powerful of the given swells.  Secondary swell is just that, secondary to the primary swell, but still very important.  We measure waves and swells by height -- the distance from the bottom of the trough to the top of the crest -- and by period -- the time between crests passing a given point.

Wind waves are the easiest way to ruin a day.  This is what we normally see referred to as "white caps."  They're usually extremely short period, very steep on the face and can be quite inconsistent.

When gauging the swells, anything near "square seas" is a bad day.  "Square seas" are when the height in feet matches the period in seconds.  In other words, a 4' swell at 4 seconds is a horrible day on the water, while a 4' swell at 20 seconds is a gorgeous day.

When considering the secondary swell, anything near 90° off the primary swell direction is where it gets bad.  For example, a 4' primary swell out of the west with a 2' secondary swell out of the south can make for some uncomfortable chop.

Putting this all together, you need to consider all 3 types of sea state when making a decision.  Here is an example of a good day:  a 4' swell out of the SW with a period of 15 seconds and a secondary swell of 2' out of the SSW at a period of 7 seconds with wind waves of 1'.  This would mean you would occasionally have a 6' swell when the swells piled up together, but it would be a fairly gentle rise and fall.  The wind waves wouldn't have much of an effect as long as the winds themselves were calm. 

A few examples of bad days:  Wind waves 2-4' with winds at 10 kt out of the south, a 2-4' primary swell our of the west at 20 seconds with no secondary swell; wind waves 1-2' with winds at 10kt out of the west, a 2-4' primary swell at a period of 5 seconds also out of the west, with a secondary swell of 1-2' with a period of 10 seconds out of the west.

Put that knowledge together with the other recommendations in this thread and you start to be able to judge a forecast and make a launch decision.  However, your launch decision is only that.  Once you get underway, you can decide to turn back at any point and the cost of turning back is always cheaper than the cost of being a SAR case (emotionally, physically, and possibly monetarily).

To help me determine my personal wind tolerance I bought a cheap anemometer (link below) so I could link the actual wind speed I was experiencing to the conditions on the water. By doing this on a few trips I determined that a steady wind around 10mph was the level when I typically start heading back to shore, of course that is influenced by swell, how far I'm out, etc. and everyone has a different tolerance. Now I have a much better idea of what to look for in the forecasts. You could also try to use the Beaufort scale to estimate wind speed, but it is not very quantitative.


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Being a wreckless dumbo in the past, dunking and eating surf. I learned from it. Now I follow 3 rules when checking the condition. That is 10,4, S.

Winds have to be 10 knots or less.
Swell on 4 or lower, I would go up to 5 is the gaps are more than 10 secs
NO on SOUTH WIND or SOUTH SWELL. Even the above criteria are met, I wouldn't go with the south wind.

Being a wreckless dumbo in the past, dunking and eating surf. I learned from it. Now I follow 3 rules when checking the condition. That is 10,4, S.

Winds have to be 10 knots or less.
Swell on 4 or lower, I would go up to 5 is the gaps are more than 10 secs
NO on SOUTH WIND or SOUTH SWELL. Even the above criteria are met, I wouldn't go with the south wind.

What is it about S wind and S swell that makes it worse/more dangerous? I also have heard that S swell kills the bite.

A factor to consider in addition to those very well discussed above is the manner in which you intend to fish.  When I'm trolling I can handle more wind and waves than I can when I'm jigging and trying to hold myself stationary over the bottom.

Like JP52, I bought an inexpensive handheld anemometer to get myself familiar with the effect of different wind speeds on waves and the speed that you can kayak into the wind.  I think a lot of people think that the wind is blowing a lot faster than it actually is.  For example, when the wind is blowing 10 miles an hour, they may think that it's blowing 16 miles per hour.  This can lead to trouble if the wind is predicted to be 16 mph, and they think "Hey, I can handle that with no problem," and then they discover "Whoa, 16 mph is actually pretty breezy." 

I mount a wind direction indicator on my kayak, and consider it to be a very valuable tool when jigging. See my post at https://www.northwestkayakanglers.com/index.php?topic=18212.msg195603#msg195603. By comparing the way that the indicator's ribbon is flapping to the wind speed shown by my anemometer, I have learned to use the indicator to estimate wind speed.

The Beaufort wind scale can also help you judge wind speeds.

https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/html/beaufort.shtml

For instance, at 8-12 mph, "Wave height: 0.6-1 m (2-3 ft) - Sea: Small wavelets - Crests begin to break"

And at 13-18 mph, "Wave height: 1-1.5 m - Sea: Small waves becoming longer, numerous whitecaps."

-Allen

What do you all think about the accuracy of the NOAA marine forecasts? I had a day recently where the NOAA forecast (point specific) was calling for 15knts of wind. When I got to the spot in the morning (just planned to fish off the rocks on account of the forecast), it was actually almost perfectly calm. The wind did pick up by the afternoon by 1 or 2pm.

On a related note - I have been looking at the PredictWind.com program. It shows wind forecasts based on a few different models and has a nice graphic display. It lets you look at predictions from two different models at once on the same screen. Sometimes the different models seem to all agree very well, but other times, they give wildly different predictions.

I guess if the forecasts give a prediction for high winds/swells and it turns out to be wrong, your biggest complaint is you might have missed out on a good day. But if the forecasts are showing favorable conditions but that turns out not to be the case, you could have bigger problems.

What do you all think about the accuracy of the NOAA marine forecasts?

It seems to me that NOAA generally gives a worst-case scenario. There are many days where conditions remain nice hours and hours into a small craft advisory. Their forecasts are weird in other ways too. For example, there are quite a few days where the forecast in Santa Cruz will be for, say, 5 mph winds, but a mile offshore it's supposed to be blowing at 20+ knots. I don't know how the wind is supposed to know to stop at the waters edge.

Windy.com has nice for the visual display and you can easily compare several forecasts.

I like this one too:
http://solspot.com/santa-cruz-county-7-day-detailed-swell-forecast/
If you drag your cursor across the timeline, it'll show you the wind and swell simultaneously.

Thanks all for the replies.  The advices are invaluable and I'll follow it.  Safety is always in my mind, that's why I joined this group to ask questions from more experienced kayakers.  A lot of valuable information was given here and I really appreciate it.  Thanks.