Every great product starts with a problem. For us, that problem became painfully clear during a fishing trip to the canyons off New Jersey this past spring. Despite checking multiple weather apps before our departure, we found ourselves caught in conditions that none of us had expected. The wind shifted unexpectedly and waves built faster than anticipated. What should have been an exciting day of offshore fishing with high hopes of bringing home some fresh tuna turned into a stressful grind back to port.
That experience sparked a question: Why is marine weather forecasting so difficult to get right?
The Problem with Traditional Weather Apps
There's no shortage of weather apps for boaters and fishermen. In fact, there are dozens of them. But they all share the same fundamental problem: they simply display fancy charts of raw data from various weather models, leaving it up to you to interpret what it all means.
GFS, ECMWF, ICON ... most boaters have no idea what these models are, how they differ, or which one to trust when they disagree. So when conditions don't match expectations, who gets blamed? The so-called "weatherman." But the reality is that there are so many weather variables across so many different models that most people don't know how to interpret them - or simply can't process that amount of data. And that's not even considering other critical factors like your boat's direction of travel relative to the wind and waves.
Marine weather is fundamentally different from land weather. You need to understand:
- Waves - Height, period, and direction all matter for planning a safe and comfortable trip
- Wind - Speed, gusts, and direction behave differently over open water than over land
- Visibility - Fog, haze, and spray can make navigation dangerous
- Precipitation - Rain and storms impact both safety and comfort on the water
- Model Convergence - When weather models agree, confidence is high; when they don't, proceed with caution
- Trends - Are conditions improving or deteriorating throughout your trip?
- Vessel Direction - Heading into the wind and waves versus running with them makes all the difference
- Vessel Size - A 50-foot sportfisher handles conditions very differently than a 22-foot center console
- Regional Factors - Local effects like inlets, currents, and coastal geography create unique conditions
Our Mission
We founded SeaLegs AI with a simple mission: make professional marine weather forecasting accessible, accurate, and actionable for everyone who ventures onto the water.
Whether you're a weekend warrior heading offshore, a charter captain planning a fishing trip, or a delivery skipper crossing an ocean, you deserve forecasts that are tailored to your trip and easy to understand.
Why AI Makes the Difference
The weather models themselves are actually quite good. GFS, ECMWF, ICON ... these are incredibly sophisticated simulations built by some of the smartest meteorologists in the world. The problem isn't the data. It's making sense of all that data for your specific trip on your specific vessel.
That's where AI comes in. Our approach uses AI to do what humans try to do, but at scale: synthesize large amounts of information from multiple models, factor in your vessel type and planned route, and make an intelligent assessment about what conditions will actually be like for you on the water.
SeaLegs AI takes raw model data from multiple sources, considers your specific situation, and produces a forecast that tells you not just what the marine conditions will be, but whether it's a good day for your boat to make that trip.
Building for the Community
From the beginning, we knew that SeaLegs AI couldn't just be an app. The boating community is diverse - there are developers building the next great boating app, charter businesses streamlining operations, and marine services looking to add weather intelligence - plus countless other use cases we haven't even imagined yet.
That's why we also built SeaLegs AI for Developers. We want to empower developers and businesses to integrate marine weather intelligence into their own products. When the entire ecosystem has access to better forecasting, everyone on the water benefits.
Looking Ahead
SeaLegs AI already provides global coverage and is available in 6 languages - and we're just getting started. We have an exciting roadmap of new features designed to make the most accurate marine forecasts available to everyone. We're building based on feedback from our community, and we can't wait to show you what's next.
If you share our passion for making boating safer and more enjoyable, we'd love to have you aboard. Try our app first, then use our API to build something amazing.
Fair winds and following seas.
- The SeaLegs AI Crew