Is It Boat Day? ⛵🌊

Live local boating conditions for Boca Raton, FL, consolidated into one page with a single composite Boat Day score that answers one question: should you take the boat out today? Built config-first so adding a new boating town is a single entry — the long-term goal is every boating town.

TODO: after changing the boat mark in assets/icon.svg, regenerate the raster PNGs (public/icon-*.png, app/icon.png, app/apple-icon.png) via scripts/gen-icons — they are still the old artwork until then.

What it shows

• Wind — the make-or-break factor, shown in knots (NWS + nearest NDBC buoy), with gust spread when the buoy reports it
• Seas — wave height & period, e.g. "2.3 ft @ 9 s" (NDBC buoy + Open-Meteo)
• Tides — next high/low and an inlet note keyed to the trend and wind (NOAA CO-OPS)
• NWS marine zone alerts — Small Craft Advisory, Gale/Storm Warning, Special Marine Warning, Dense Fog Advisory (api.weather.gov) — the safety authority
• Lightning — nearest strike + recency from NOAA GOES GLM (a reason to stay docked)
• Visibility — fog is a navigation hazard (Open-Meteo)
• Air & water temp, humidity, dew point, UV, cloud cover, rain chance — NWS + Open-Meteo
• On the water — how busy the water actually is, counted from the Boca Inlet + Lake Boca cams by a scheduled GitHub Actions vision job (boats per view → quiet / light / moderate / busy / packed), with a calendar-based typical-traffic model as fallback when there's no fresh cam read
• Ramp & marina traffic — congestion near the waterfront (HERE Traffic, optional)
• Inlet & waterway cams — check the inlet before you launch; each cam shows live weather & wind from Open-Meteo at its own coordinates

The Boat Day score

One composite Boat Day score (0–100), weighted for boaters. Sub-scores (weights sum to 1.00; a missing input drops out of the weighted average):

Sub-score	Weight	What it rewards
Wind	24%	Calm/glass (≤10 kn) is best; fades to 0 by 25 kn. Big gust spread = squally penalty
Seas (height & period)	22%	Flat is best; long-period swell is gentler than short chop
Storms & rain	18%	Dry and sunny; thunder/rain wording clamps it down hard
Visibility	8%	Clear sightlines; fog tanks it
Air temperature	8%	Comfortable 72–90 °F plateau
Comfort (mugginess)	6%	Dew-point curve
Water temperature	6%	Pleasant for a sandbar swim
Tide & inlet	4%	Incoming is friendly; ebb against an onshore east wind = steep inlet chop
On-water traffic	4%	Emptier water scores higher; packed raft-ups (counted from the cams, or a typical-by-hour estimate) nudge it down
UV exposure	4%	No shade on a boat

Hard safety caps (worst wins; each gets a plain-English explanation):

Condition	Caps score at
Gale/Storm/Hurricane-force Warning or tsunami	5
Hurricane/Tropical Storm/Storm Surge warning (land)	10
Special Marine Warning active	15
Lightning within 10 mi	15
Thunder in current conditions	20
Marine Dense Fog Advisory or visibility < 1 mi	30
Wave height ≥ 6 ft	35
Lightning within 25 mi	40
Rain in the forecast	40
Small Craft Advisory active	45

Ratings: ≥80 Excellent · ≥65 Good · ≥45 Fair · else Poor. The verdict line (boatDayVerdict) reads e.g. "Yes — get out there", "Pretty good day to boat", "Borderline — check the caps", "Not today, captain".

The NWS marine zone forecast is the authoritative safety signal — the score is guidance, the marine warnings are the rule.

On-the-water boat traffic

How crowded the water is gets its own little pipeline, because no single API reports "how many boats are out right now." A scheduled GitHub Actions job grabs frames from the Boca Inlet + Lake Boca webcams and runs a vision model over them to count boats per view. Per-view counts map to a level — 0–1 quiet · 2–4 light · 5–9 moderate · 10–19 busy · 20+ packed — and the overall level is the worst cam (a Lake Boca raft-up dominates). The job publishes a small JSON feed to the dedicated boat-traffic-data branch, and the app reads it server-side like any other source.

• Zero API keys needed. The vision step uses free GitHub Models inference with the workflow's built-in token, so it works out of the box on a fork.
• Optional upgrades. Adding GEMINI_API_KEY, GROQ_API_KEY, or OPENROUTER_API_KEY as repo secrets upgrades the model fallback chain, but none are required.
• Honest fallback. When there's no fresh cam observation, the app falls back to a deterministic calendar-based "typical traffic" model (busier on summer weekend afternoons, quiet at dawn), learning typical-by-hour patterns from the feed's rolling history. The dashboard card is explicit about which one you're seeing — a live cam count or a typical-for-this-hour estimate.

This feeds the small 0.04-weight on-water-traffic sub-score above: emptier water scores higher, a packed inlet nudges the Boat Day score down.

Tech

Next.js (App Router) + TypeScript + Tailwind. All data is fetched server-side (avoids CORS, centralizes caching) by isolated adapters in lib/sources/*, aggregated in lib/conditions.ts, scored in lib/score.ts, and exposed at GET /api/conditions/[slug].

config/locations.ts   # add a town here — drives everything
lib/sources/*          # one adapter per data source (each degrades gracefully)
lib/conditions.ts      # parallel fetch + assemble snapshot
lib/score.ts           # Boat Day score with weighted breakdown & safety caps
app/[slug]/page.tsx    # boat dashboard (client shell: ConditionsDashboard)
app/page.tsx           # all-towns landing
app/api/conditions/... # cached JSON API (also a public endpoint)

Develop

npm install
npm run dev      # http://localhost:3000/boca-raton
npm test         # parser + scoring unit tests (Vitest)
npm run lint
npm run build

No API keys are required — every default source is free and keyless. See .env.example for the optional Stormglass key, the HERE Traffic key, and the User-Agent used for NWS.

Add a boating town

Add an entry to LOCATIONS in config/locations.ts. Four things drive everything: the NOAA tide station, the nearest NDBC buoy, the NWS marine zone (the AMZ… offshore coastal-waters zone), and the cams (list the inlet first):

{
  slug: "fort-lauderdale",
  name: "Fort Lauderdale",
  region: "Broward County, FL",
  lat: 26.122, lon: -80.103,
  timezone: "America/New_York",
  noaaTideStationId: "8722956",      // nearest NOAA CO-OPS tide station
  ndbcBuoyId: "FWYF1",                // nearest NDBC buoy
  offshoreWindFromDeg: 270,           // coast faces east -> offshore wind from the west
  nwsMarineZoneId: "AMZ630",          // NWS offshore marine zone (Coastal Waters …)
  cams: [ /* inlet cam first, then ramps / waterways; iframe or link cams */ ],
}

That's it — the route, scoring, and UI all pick it up automatically.

• Find the tide station: https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/ — search the inlet/harbor.
• Find the buoy: https://www.ndbc.noaa.gov/ — the nearest coastal station.
• Find the marine zone: the AMZ… id from the NWS marine forecast for your coast (e.g. Boca Raton is AMZ650, "Coastal waters from Jupiter Inlet to Deerfield Beach FL out 20 NM"). Confirm against https://api.weather.gov/zones/marine/AMZ650.

Deploy

Netlify

This repo already ships netlify.toml (and .nvmrc), so it's zero-config on the official Next.js runtime:

1. Push to GitHub, then in Netlify pick Add a new site → Import an existing project and select this repo. Netlify reads netlify.toml (npm run build, Node 20, the @netlify/plugin-nextjs plugin) and auto-installs the plugin.
2. No environment variables are required. Optionally set CONDITIONS_USER_AGENT, HERE_API_KEY, or STORMGLASS_API_KEY (see .env.example) under Site settings → Environment variables.
3. SSG pages, the /api/conditions/[slug] route, and per-source next.revalidate caching all work on Netlify's Next.js runtime.

From the CLI instead: npm i -g netlify-cli && netlify deploy --build (add --prod to publish).

DNS for isitboatday.com (Namecheap)

The domain is registered at Namecheap; point it at Netlify:

1. In Netlify → Domain settings, add isitboatday.com as a custom domain. Netlify shows you the exact records to create (an apex A or ALIAS record, plus a CNAME for www).
2. In Namecheap → Domain List → Manage → Advanced DNS, add those records:
   • the apex A/ALIAS record Netlify displays (its load-balancer IP / ALIAS target), and
   • a CNAME for www pointing at the …netlify.app host Netlify shows.
3. Save. DNS propagates within minutes to a few hours. HTTPS is automatic — Netlify provisions a Let's Encrypt certificate once the records resolve.

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Is It Boat Day is a sister app of isitbeachday.com — same skeleton, different judgment call.

Scores are an automated estimate for general guidance only — not a safety determination. Check the official NWS marine forecast and use your own judgment as captain.