Marine Radios Review

Your VHF Marine Radio can be a life saver if an emergency broadcast comes in from the NOAA Weather Service.   Did you know that the wave height predicted (say 3-5 feet) doesn’t mean that 5 feet is the highest wave you will find.  Remember, the height of a wave is the distance from the trough to the crest of the wave.  Therefore, in order to figure out the wave forecast, the NOAA uses a formula which the square root of the sum of the “height of the waves” squared plus the “height of the wind waves” squared.   A wind wave is the height of swell wave generated by the distant wind affect on the waves.  An example of this may be if a significant wave height may be predicted as 10 ft., 1 in 10 waves will be larger than 11 ft; 1 in 100 waves will belarger than 16 ft; and 1 in 1,000 waves will be larger than 19 ft.  Occasionally reports of “rogue” waves come in which exceed a ratio even greater than what I stated above.  Lesson to be learned…..?  Always keep a marine VHF Radio tuned in to NOAA to keep you an all those on board safe.  Happy Boater.