Sunday, October 24, 2010

A dedicated weather-widget for seakayaking in the Netherlands

One of the "lessons learnt" in the Dutch seakayaking-incident last June regards trip-preparation: the importance of a proper orientation on to be expected conditions of weather, wind and waves. It may sound all very obvious, but it proves to be neglected easily... Standing on the beach, sheltered by the dunes conditions may look harmless, but what can you expect some miles out, a few hours later?

Axel has designed a helpful tool for Dutch seakayakers: "Vaarweer" - a weather widget that gives direct access to actual weather reports, wave statistics and tidal predictions for the most popular paddling destinations along the Dutch coast. I've put a link to Vaarweer in the lists of boormarks on the left side of the Kajakwoerden-weblog. Axel says (invites you to...) that (provided you are a bit more handy with internet-applications than I am..) it's also possible to integrate a Vaarweer-widget on any website.

Compared to 10-15 years ago there is much easier access to more, better and more specific information about the weather. Now it's about the skill how to interpret this amount of information!

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