Magicseaweed

6541

Hi all, so I logged onto Magicweed.com yesterday where I saw Enniscrone had five stars. I finished work and raced to Enniscrone. Wetsuit on and out. I would call myself an intermediate surfer. What I found was very fast waves, waves on top of each other. A lot of white mush.

Don't get me wrong I really enjoyed it, spent two hours in the water, but 5 stars it wasn't. Can anyone help here. How can I learn to read the conditions because magicseaweed's models are wrong. I don't want to hop into a car and drive an hour for mush. This surfing season, which starts now I want targeted surfing !
Thanks for the advice.

Mickeroo

I think the stars are purely based on the swell size and wave period. I can see it's 4 stars today but it will be crap because the wind is cross on shore.

I think the wind was westerly yesterday so it would have been cross again, you want either no wind at all (rare here) or an off shore wind to ensure nice clean waves. (off shore means blowing from the land to the sea).

Have a look at this sticky, the second post in particular talks about reading the forecast: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055828999

Typically enniscrone works best with a southerly breeze as the beach is facing north. If the swell is over a metre/metre and a half there would usually be a wave of some description there from my experience (it's by no means my local though so I couldn't really say what its best conditions are but I've always had fun there provided the swell is 1.5-2m)

6541

Windguru is going to take a bit of studying, but I will give it a shot.

Mickeroo

6541 wrote: »

Windguru is going to take a bit of studying, but I will give it a shot.

I prefer it to MSW myself. really the only things you need to look at starting out are wind direction, wind strength, swell direction and swell size (period is sort of important too but not really). And to apply those you need to know the orientation of the beach. Learning what swell size/direction will work at which spot will come with experience.

I think I've seen you post in the Mayo forum so i'll assume you're based around Castlebar. So in terms of wind direction for the main surf beaches nearby: if it's coming from the north go to Achill, if it's coming from the east go to Carrownisky if it's coming from the south go to Enniscrone.

6541

Okay reading windguru for Enniscrone, would you say this Saturday would tick the box for wind direction and wave direction, but fail because of the small swell size ?

Mickeroo

6541 wrote: »

Okay reading windguru for Enniscrone, would you say this Saturday would tick the box for wind direction and wave direction, but fail because of the small swell size ?

The swell looks a bit all over the place but the wind direction is spot on (wind strength is a bit high though).

The swell forecast for 13h and 16h looks good going by that but I wouldn't trust it when it looks so bad for the rest of the day. Saturday is a few days away yet though so I'd be surprised if that forecast hasn't changed come the weekend.

6541

Thanks a million my man.

Mickeroo

No problem at all, best of luck with it

rodento

That swell may have a load of south in it so may not get into enniscrone

beefburrito

When the star's have a stronger hue of blue it's worth getting out,but when the star's are more dull I wouldn't bother.

6541

So for the craic I went to Enniscrone last night and took a screen grab of the conditions.
It was great, the only thing was the waves were very fast. So no rest at all.

rodento

I always check the swell direction from here

https://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/wxmap_cgi/cgi-bin/wxmap_single.cgi?area=ww3_atlantic&dtg=2017083106&prod=sgwvht&tau=000&set=SeaState

And winds off either wc weather/windguru/met.ie