[rirockhound]

Frightnight, this is not meant as an attack AT ALL, just an observation...

After ~1200 days on the bay working and fishing, (I had to add up my sea time recently) working on the bay since I was a teenager, I find it is often a case of people way overestimating the wind speed and wave heights. A true 4ft is a decent wave. Figure when you are in the trough 4ft is even with your chest, stomach, head, neck, depending on how tall you are. If someone says 5ft on the upper bay my antennas really go up. I got caught in a squall last June at Fields Point with 60kt gusts out of the south (actual measured at Conimicut Pt) and the waves never got above true 4's with an occasional 5ft. Unless you are at the mouth of one of the bays it takes a lot to get to 4 or 5ft...

I can't tell you how many times I get a call or have a discussion with someone that it was 4ft + and 25kts out there, on the same day I were out on the bay, and the heights might have been 2 w/ an occasional 3. There are places in the bay where it can steepen and stack up quick, but 4ft chop is a decent wave... Forecasted 10-15 w/ gusts to 20 and a 2-3ft chop can look and feel a lot nastier than it is. I'm not saying you are in this category, but a lot of the time, people just don't realize what those conditions actually look and feel like. I've been guilty of this myself, plenty of times!

For what it's worth, at both Conimicut Pt and Newport, and on the morning and afternoon 31st, the highest gusts recorded during the day was 25kt (I checked the tide-gauge data)

Pete is right, there are often clues to it:
Easterly, outside the bay, add them together (my grandfather taught me that) if it says 10-15, expect gusts to 25.
Behind a cold front or after a NE/SE blow, expect hard NW or if it is the first day of a warm stretch (SW), expect the wind to be higher than forecasted.
Late usually turns out to mean when there is a late morning/early afternoon tide change, for whatever reason...

Some goon wrote an article in OTW a month or so ago about using the internet to check conditions... when you get home from a snotty day, check the data, I bet you'll find it to be bad, but less than it felt out there...