Best iPad Apps for Surfing

Surfing apps are still pretty undeveloped as capturing the local surf conditions from surrounding beaches requires a lot of interaction from surf cams and surfers right there right now. This technology of course will improve fast, but as yet getting an accurate reading of the surf and the weather is a little bit hit and miss depending on where you’re based and the current apps to support your location. Well, enough said – let’s explore what apps are on offer right now.   Hurly Surf Coastal Watch
Price: $2.99 This is for Ozi’s only who have up to 110 coastal beaches to choose from to get the latest feeds from the beach cams up and down the coasts. You get to watch replays of the surf on your iPhone plus other features include the “Near Me” button, which using your GPS will search for the local haunts giving you the latest wave height and distance. You also get the weather predictions for the week such as a 5 day human surf outlook,  as well as wind indicators, tidal data, the current and forecast temperature and weather patterns including wind history  in knots. Bear in mind Australia is a vast region and with only 110 beaches to cover you may well live far too far from the local swell it’s reporting on. As this app costs $2.99 email support to check out if you’re area is included and what beaches so you can be sure it’ll be of use.   MSW Surf Forecast
Price: Free MSW predicts the surf from over 2500 beaches globally and it’s free! Its features include swell distance, height, direction, wind gust speeds, how accurate the forecast is by percentage and the atmospheric pressure. It will give you a 3 to 10 day forecast, with live boy and wind station data, feeding you the latest hot spots, where the conditions are fantastic by the minute and an up to date photo gallery of those particular beaches which are getting the best surf right now. Surf feeds for this app are fed from global news networks to deliver a pretty stunning interface with the bottom menu listing favorites, spots, media and more. Take Newquay at Fistral Bay for example where all swell components are listed in the form of bar graphs for the height of wave at a particular time of day, today’s tide and wind gust directions and speed. Time forecasts are broken down into 3 hour slots. There are pro-editions of this app, but the free software delivers more than enough, with a 4.5/5 rating from 500+ users of its latest updated version it gets good reviews.   Top 100 Waves
Price: $1.99 This app for a couple of bucks delivers some incredible live footage of the swells at some of the best beaches around the world. Not just videos, you get photos of live recent swells from anywhere, with feeds from some of the top magazines like Surfer, Tracks and ASP. With the iPhone you obviously get to take photo’s which you can submit straight to the app which lets others get live updates minute by minute. From North America to Indonesia to South Africa and Australia, the images are of the highest quality with some pretty sumptuous vids fed in from people and news wires. You also get the Fantasy Surfer app included as part of the main menu where like fantasy football, you pick your dream team of surfers to win big prizes. There’s also a surfing contest photo tournament where iPhone surfers can win some decent cash for the images they submit to this app. The Updated version was released May30th 2012 so still too early for any user feedback just yet.