The Accuracy Record
Every hour, GoNoGo WX Boating records the status it gives three reference boats 6, 24 and 48 hours ahead at government buoys on every coast, the Great Lakes, Alaska and Hawaii, then grades it against what each buoy measured.
The record is building. Figures appear here once a lead time has 200 graded cases, so a handful of days can never stand in for a season.
How it is graded
- The boats: a kayak, a 22 ft center console and a 35 ft sailboat, each on GoNoGo WX Boating’s own starting limits for that boat.
- The forecast: the status the briefing’s hour-by-hour gives a daylight hour 6, 24 and 48 hours ahead, gusts included, scored the way every briefing is.
- The water: the same limits applied to what the buoy measured in that hour: its wind and gusts, corrected to the standard 10 m height, and its wave height.
- Right: the two are the same status. Missed: the forecast was better than the water, the costly direction. False alarm: the forecast was worse than the water.
What it does not grade
Advisories and warnings (a buoy measures no advisory), thunderstorms and fog, hours after dark, and an hour a buoy did not measure both wind and waves. These buoys sit in open water, which is the easiest place to forecast. Conditions in creeks, inside inlets and on bars are not measured here and are not covered by these figures.
What captains told us
The one-tap answers from the morning email (“Was the briefing right about the water?”) are counted here once there are 200 of them. They are a captain’s own view, kept apart from the buoy record.