Skip to content

NDBC station · fixed platform

Station SANF1: Sand Key, FL

24.456°N 81.877°W · Straits of Florida from west end of Seven Mile Bridge to south of Halfmoon Shoal out 20 NM

CAUTIONon wind alone, for a typical 25 to 35 ft center console. This station is not reporting seas.
Wind
ESE 17 kt, gusting 20
Air
86°F
Pressure
1020.0 mb, steady

Reported 29 min ago · National Data Buoy Center, station SANF1

A buoy reading is not a go/no-go

SANF1 measures the water. It does not know your boat. Fifteen knots and three feet is a pleasant afternoon on one hull and a beating on another, and the difference is the two or three numbers you already carry in your head. GoNoGo Weather scores this station and the forecast around it against your own limits and gives you one straight answer, with the hour it changes.

Score SANF1 against YOUR boat

Free, no card required.

How to read station SANF1

This is a fixed station: a platform or a shore mast. It reports wind, pressure and temperature reliably and usually carries no wave sensor, so seas here come from the model rather than from an instrument.

Period matters as much as height. Four feet at ten seconds is a long, easy swell; four feet at four seconds is a short steep chop that stops a boat. Wind against tide steepens everything, and a buoy cannot see that from where it floats. Age matters too: stations go quiet, and a reading that has not updated in three hours is history rather than weather.

This station sits in the NWS marine zone Straits of Florida from west end of Seven Mile Bridge to south of Halfmoon Shoal out 20 NM (GMZ054), which is the forecast we read alongside it.

This is a read of official forecasts and observations, not a guarantee. You know your boat and your crew. The call is yours.