I was listening to the VHF radio N.O.A.A. weather report as my fisherman came walking down the dock. We both smiled as we listened to the computer generated digital voice desperately try to annunciate the forecast for the day. The mono-tone prediction droned on until it finally assured us there would only be 10 knot winds blowing out of the S-SW. He looked up at a nearby palm tree and said that it was probably going to be a lot windier than the official forecast. He then explained that he grew up on the tiny Caribbean island of Saba where they learned to read the sea and sky to establish their local weather forecast.

Once we cleared the outer markers the boat began to relentlessly pound through each wave and wind swept ocean spray quickly covered everyone on-board. As we crossed the reef-line the sea state became even worse, and I had to back off the throttles to ensure everyone still had their fillings in their teeth by the time we got back to the dock. Suddenly a rogue wave crested over the bow and my fisherman desperately clung to the tower with both hands as Mother Nature taught us the true meaning of "rock and roll." Water ran over the deck and out the scuppers, and my fisherman wondered out loud if the weather forecasters knew exactly how wrong they had been.

As we plodded along through the rough seas I found myself sharing a weather story from last year's Hurricane season. I told my fisherman how I was in Orlando when the hurricane center first predicted a CAT 4 or 5 storm was going to strike the Florida Keys and could obliterate the island chain. I immediately began searching every TV channel looking for additional information on the storm's track, intensity and forward speed. The next morning the forecast was even more disturbing as the line down the center of the "cone of death" was lying directly over my tiny island. We threw everything into the car and quickly headed toward the Keys so we could prepare for this devastating storm. We made the return trip in record time as all of the traffic was in the other lane...streaming out of the Florida Keys in response to the Monroe County's mandatory evacuation notice.

The weather was hot, humid, and eerily calm when we reached home. I ran around like a wild man putting up shutters and lashing down the boats. Totally exhausted, I collapsed in front of the TV that night to discover that the forecasters had "changed their minds." Now they felt the storm would only brush the Keys with some very gusty winds and heavy rain.

The reality is that predicting the future is a nearly impossible task. Maybe that's why they originally named hurricanes after women since no one knew what they were going to do next! In all fairness, the weather guys have a very tough mission. I am really glad that I don't have the responsibility of forecasting the weather for a living, as it seems a lot like trying to herd cats -- lots of running around, but not much success.

Maybe it is time to implement a few changes at the N.O.A.A. weather bureau. The first thing I would recommend is that they change the name to N.O.-W.A.Y. This seems like a much more appropriate moniker as I think by now everyone realizes that there is no way they are ever going to consistently get the weather forecast right. Second, I would recommend they immediately stop using the nautical term KNOT, and instead use the word NOT-- as in, "it's most likely not going to be what we forecast today, so just be careful out there."

Most importantly, I would like to see a little humor infused into this stoic meteorological organization. I mean have you ever heard one of the weather guys actually admit their forecast was wrong?

Just once I would like to turn on the mariners VHF weather forecast and hear a real human voice say, "Wow, did we really blow that forecast yesterday...but the good news is the pounding you received from those treacherous waves will probably keep you from ever developing kidney stones."

In reality the weather guys actually do a pretty good job forecasting the weather most of the time. I am confident that eventually they will figure out the right combination of variables required by their expensive weather super computers to accurately forecast the weather. Until then, we may want to use the low-tech forecast system I saw on Grand Turk Island. They had a Conch shell hanging on a rope below a sign that read:

CONCH WEATHER FORECAST

Conch Shell Wet...................RAIN

Conch Shell Swinging..........WINDY

Conch Shell Hot.................SUNNY

Conch Shell Cool...................CLOUDY

Conch Shell Missing.............HURRICANE

While the rough seas did beat us up pretty good that day, we still ended up with a lot of fish in the box. And believe it or not, by late afternoon, just as we started back home, the winds actually did start to drop down to near 10 knots as originally forecast. So hats off to the weather guys, once again you were ultimately correct. Unfortunately, just not in our time continuum or latitude.

Obviously weather forecasting is a very complicated science; perhaps it would help if they included information from a tall palm tree and a swinging Conch in their computer meteorological analysis formula.

Capt. Pete Peterson welcomes comments and suggestions sent to petersonventures@aol.com.