The story behind WAVOA
Why I built WAVOA
It started with an afternoon talking about wind, waves and why this was still so complicated.
00 — The beginning
One afternoon, talking about wind.
This summer, I was sitting with my dad talking about something we have both spent a lot of time thinking about over the years: when is it actually worth going out on the water?
My dad has been windsurfing for more than 40 years. He was the one who got me into the sport when I was young, and wind and wave sports have been part of my life ever since.
You would think that after all those years — and with a phone in everyone's pocket — answering a simple question about tomorrow would be easy.
It wasn't. And that afternoon, our conversation eventually turned into WAVOA.
Where should we go tomorrow?
The app my dad and I kept looking for
We already had plenty of weather and watersports apps. The problem was that none of them felt like the whole answer.
My dad and I would open one forecast, then another because we trusted a particular model there. If they disagreed, we jumped back and forth. Then we still had to think about the spot, the sport and the gear in the car.
Neither of us owns one board and one sail that works for everything. A good windsurfing day may be completely wrong for a SUP session.
That afternoon I realised we weren't looking for more data. We were looking for one place that could make sense of it for the way we actually go on the water.
So I started building the app we wanted for ourselves. I called it WAVOA — a made-up name inspired by waves and wind.
The question was never just “What is the forecast?” It was “Is tomorrow a good day for us?”
I wanted the forecast to feel personal
At first I thought bringing the data together would be the easy part. It wasn't.
Public data and forecast models are useful, but they don't make the decision for you when you're standing at home wondering whether to load the car.
Twenty knots doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. It doesn't even mean the same thing to me when I change sport, board or sail.
That is why WAVOA keeps the different forecasts visible instead of pretending there is one perfect answer, and why it can take the equipment you actually own into account.
This became personal for another reason: I have less free time than I used to. I can't spend every windy afternoon at the water, and I don't want to spend the little time I have checking apps.
If a good window is coming, I want the good day to find me.
Then I wanted the other half of the day
Forecasting was originally the problem we were trying to solve.
But there is another part of watersports I have always wanted in the same place: what actually happened once I got on the water?
This has become one of my favourite parts of WAVOA. I start a session from my Apple Watch and go.
It records my route and the numbers I care about. Afterwards the session sits beside the forecast, the conditions and the equipment I used.
I can remember not only what the forecast said, but what the day actually felt like.
And when I want to share a good session, I decide which parts of it other people see.
The forecast before the session and the reality on the water finally belong together.
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A few promises I wanted to keep
Building WAVOA also forced me to decide how I wanted to build it.
I want the core to remain genuinely useful without turning the app into a collection of paywalls. Some features cost real money to operate, so paid plans help me keep building, but the free part should still feel complete.
And I don't want to pay for WAVOA with other people's data. There is no advertising, I don't want to build profiles of people, and your sessions should remain yours.
Those are the rules I want to come back to as WAVOA grows.
The idea is still the same
The watersports app I wanted for us.
WAVOA started with an afternoon talking to my dad. We weren't trying to invent a new way to windsurf. We just couldn't understand why everything surrounding a session still had to be scattered across so many different places.
Check this forecast. Compare it with that one. Remember which gear works. Check again tomorrow. Record the session somewhere else. Maybe write down which equipment you used. Maybe don't.
We wanted one place for the whole thing. That's still the idea behind WAVOA.
I want it to become my personal companion for watersports — something that knows the sports I do and the equipment I own, watches the conditions when I don't have time to, helps me decide where to go, comes onto the water with me, and remembers the session afterwards.
My dad introduced me to windsurfing when I was young. More than 40 years after he started windsurfing himself, we're still talking about forecasts and waiting for the next good day.
Now, at least, we have the app we wanted while having those conversations.
That's WAVOA.