Acceptable forecast for beginners

Awesome information and thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and experience. Much appreciated my friend. 🙏🏼

Thanh

I was watching the forecast for Sunday, it was 6' @13 on sonoma coast. That's the max id like to launch and land with but  manageable. I drive an hour to the Jenner and see that the waves were slamming on the beach. As solid 6ft+ waves are barreling on the shore every 12 seconds and the water is kinda grey I decided to abort my fishing plans. I was full of regret for cancelation but as treacherous as the ocean has been lately I felt okay with my decision to fight another day. Long winded way of saying that you need to adapt to conditions.

Great thread.  I use windy.com.  You can get the secondary swell here if you click on waves and tide at the bottom of the screen.  I use surf-forecast.com to find the power of the surf or swell in kilojoules, also the secondary swell and a more detailed direction of swell in degrees.  Tides4fishing.com to look at the tidal curve and see what the moon is up to regarding the bite window.  You’ll be slaying before you know it.  See ya on da wattah’

I'm also an avid Windy user. You can see 6 different wind models when you click on the wind view at the bottom. I find ECMWF is good for most places but GFS seems more accurate sometimes. In any case, when all the models agree it gives me more confidence in the forecast. The days when all the models say very low wind are the days when I bring my wife.

Since I almost always sail, I'm especially interested in wind forecasts, as too little wind can be worse than too much wind (up to a point...).

I look at the NWS and windy but, ironically, windy not so much for wind as for swell. Lots of days, the multiple forecasts on windy will vary by 10 knots or more, which pretty much guarantees that one of them will be right. While some of their multi-forecasts tend to be a little more accurate, I've not found that any of them is a whole lot better than the others. As Eric mentioned, windy is very good for the big picture, though, so I alway zoom out to get that.

Perhaps surprisingly, for my home turf (and surf?) in Santa Cruz, I find the willyweather wind forecast is the most consistently accurate, at least if I don't venture more than a couple miles offshore:

https://wind.willyweather.com/ca/santa-cruz-county/santa-cruz.html

I’m looking at HMB for tomorrow with a swell of 6’ and 3 knots of wind, are those acceptable conditions for a beginner there?
It seems ok to me (would prefer smaller swell), but it would be my first time there and I would value a second opinion 😁

Dan, did you make it to HMB yesterday? Interested in your thoughts. I was there, and the swell seemed worse than the forecast, especially as the day wore on. Either I don't know what 6@13 looks like or it was worse than that. Either way, it was a learning experience.

On my way out to the red can, I saw a kayak paddler (not a fisherman) had capsized. He was lucky that others on the water noticed him and went over to help. His kayak looked fast but not that stable, for what it's worth. He was wearing a good PFD but I don't think he had immersion gear.

I was thinking of going to HMB Sunday and as a new guy this kind of information is invaluable in making a go/no go decision. Thank you.

Sunday looks good right now. That said, it is only a window of good weather with the swell increasing a lot at the end of the day which is not ideal. If you do go just be ready to head in if conditions start to deteriorate and don't venture too far from the harbor. Hope you getum!

Thanks everyone for the extremely detailed responses, this community is a gold mine! 😃
I did not go last weekend. There’s a crabbing short by TLA https://youtube.com/shorts/io089fRB9zs?si=gx_Opki3GclbYnz2, but he’s on a boat off HMB, so unsure if that’s representative

Sunday looks good right now. That said, it is only a window of good weather with the swell increasing a lot at the end of the day which is not ideal. If you do go just be ready to head in if conditions start to deteriorate and don't venture too far from the harbor. Hope you getum!

What are you looking at for the swell forecast? I see 3 at 18 sec on Willy Weather. That would pretty much look flat.

Sunday looks good right now. That said, it is only a window of good weather with the swell increasing a lot at the end of the day which is not ideal. If you do go just be ready to head in if conditions start to deteriorate and don't venture too far from the harbor. Hope you getum!

What are you looking at for the swell forecast? I see 3 at 18 sec on Willy Weather. That would pretty much look flat.

I look at Willy Weather and Windy. Both say it picks up to 7' by midnight. So long as the window doesn't change it's no problem and it will be great day. I just suggest to be aware in case the swell comes in earlier.

Sunday looks good right now. That said, it is only a window of good weather with the swell increasing a lot at the end of the day which is not ideal. If you do go just be ready to head in if conditions start to deteriorate and don't venture too far from the harbor. Hope you getum!

What are you looking at for the swell forecast? I see 3 at 18 sec on Willy Weather. That would pretty much look flat.

I look at Willy Weather and Windy. Both say it picks up to 7' by midnight. So long as the window doesn't change it's no problem and it will be great day. I just suggest to be aware in case the swell comes in earlier.

Ok I see what you’re referring to now. Of course with the possible variables in wind and swell forecasts I suppose we should always assume that a good forecast can turn bad and vice versa. Every good forecast is just an opening between the bad ones. 😉