We enjoyed playing with the Boater Information System from the University of Washington Applied Physics Library the other day. It’s a work-in-progress, though, and only covers the Pacific Northwest. If you want a full-featured, boating-focused weather forecast site that covers U.S. waters and some international areas, Sailflow is the best site I know of currently.

Sailflow is a feature-rich service, even including voice and cell phone browser-based forecasts. There are a wide range of weather maps available, the most compelling being an animated wind forecast model.

Regular wind model:

Enhanced, animated wind model:

In some areas, e.g. San Francisco Bay, Sailflow has set up their own sensor networks and forecast models, and have meteorologists on staff that provide forecasts that are more detailed and sailor-oriented than the standard NOAA ones. These are very nice features, but not available everywhere. The value-added features are available when you subscribe to their service, but you can try them out for a month just for joining the site. However, if you are not in an area that has the advanced coverage (Puget Sound, for one) you’ll probably just want to stick to the free service. It’s basically equivalent to other marine weather information sources, but pretty well-organized and usable.

Check it out: Sailflow.com