Gonnasurf for Magicseaweed users

Magicseaweed (MSW), the popular surf forecasting website and app, has announced that it is closing its doors, and their parent company' Surfline app should be used as an alternative.

While surfline's surf forecast has some interest, a part of the surfers community cannot stand it, either because of its inaccuracy, or for the way how information is presented.

For the surf conditions in Fuerteventura, gonna.surf is a local alternative solution with some unique benefits:

No ads
More accurate forecast
Visual and user-friendly interface
Faster loading times, especially useful under poor cell network coverage.

Let's review the features of MSW, and discover their equivalent in gonna.surf.

Surf forecast

Pick your measurement units

Let's start by making ourselves comfortable: gonna.surf can show the forecast measurements in a range of imperial and metric units.

There is also a colorblind-friendly mode which you can activate.

Pick your prefered measurement units

The settings are saved automatically, change them at any time in the top bar's "preferences" menu.

Covered surf spots

Rather than showing forecast per individual spots, gonna.surf's forecast is broken down in coastal areas, according to the closest forecast stations. Each area can be used to know the conditions in nearby spots, as shown below. Each area's surf spots are listed in the forecast pages.

Location of the available forecast stations

Overall surf conditions

Both MSW and gonna.surf offer a summarized visual representation of the surf conditions. While MSW shows a three-colored star-rating for the swell and a color range for the wind, gonna.surf presents a single colored indicator taking into account both the wind and swell, for easier and faster interpretation.

Swell

Just like MSW, gonna.surf presents the swell height, period and direction indicators. The measures are the average of the 33% largest waves, which is the standard way of measuring swell across the world (aka significant wave height).

MSW has a separate bar chart showing how the swell height evolves hour after hour. In gonna.surf, a wave size drawing is shown directly in the swell information table, making it easy to compare wave height during the day, without having to scroll between charts.

Gonnasurf's detailed surf forecast pages present three swells data:

Total waves is the combination of all swells
Primary swell is the most powerful ground swell measured
Wind swell measures the wind waves.

Pro-tips:

Focus mainly on the primary swell. Total waves indicates whether other swells are also present, creating choppy conditions.
Wind swell information is super useful for the East Coast, to find out whether it can be surfable on windy days (since ground swell doesn't usually reach this coast).

P.S. You can read more about these concepts on surfertoday.com's article The difference between ground swells and wind swells.

Swell power, the magic measure

Did you ever paddle out a day where the wave height was suitable for your level, only to find yourself constantly smashed all around by white water, struggling in strong currents, and pushed back regardless of your duck-diving or turtle-rolling abilities?

It is because that day, the waves had much more power, even if their height was the same as the one you are experienced with. The swell power can be measured, based on both the swell height and the swell period.

Gonna.surf presents swell power measure prominently, as this measure is incredibly convenient to know how the surf conditions will be, and decide where and when to go surfing.

Visually, in addition to the swell power measure, the blue bar at the bottom of the wave image gets darker the more power there is.

Get familiar with swell power, here are a few pointers:

In addition to the measure, two badges are shown in specific situations:

Flat : there is really no swell at all, it is not worth going out in that spot, even with a longboard.
Power : the swell power is very high, be extremely cautious.

Wind

Gonna.surf shows the wind speed in your favorite measurement unit, a direction arrow and two labels:

The wind direction label next to the arrow indicates where the wind comes from
The wind direction relatively to the coast's orientation, order to easily spot whether wind is onshore, offshore, cross...

The wind gusts speed measure shown in small characters in MSW is not available in gonna.surf at this stage.

Rather than a red / amber green wind qualification color like MagicSeaWeeds' gonna.surf has a progressive yellow / orange / red color scale linked to the wind speed. See below how it provides an instant visual cue about how the wind evolves hour after hour.

Multiple forecast layouts

Depending on whether you're planning your day and flexible about when and where to surf, or whether you can only surf at a specific time, one of the following pages will fit your needs:

Detailed surf forecast: Full presentation about the conditions in an area during the whole day
Daily visual summary: a super concise overview of the whole day in all coasts using our colored indicators
Quick surf forecast: when you want to surf at a specific time of the day, and want to compare the conditions in all coasts at that time
Surf forecast map: An interactive map, with hourly forecast display

Most of the time, you'll want to use the detailed surf forecast pages:

⬅️ West coast ↖️ North-West coast ↗️ North-East coast ➡️ East coast

Surf spot guides

Before paddling out in a new surf spot, it's always valuable to know some about it: at which tide do they work, are there currents or other risks, what are the entry and exit points... This is especially true for Fuerteventura, as most of the spots are reef breaks, and the dangers not visible at all tides.

Rather than writing long text articles describing the surf spots, Gonna.surf has developed visual surf spot guides, presenting the spots' particularities thanks to aerial photography.

Discover the spot guides