Because the ocean doesn’t care how confident you are.
There are two ways to learn about marine weather.
You can spend years out there getting surprised by it.
Or you can learn how the damn stuff works before you’re sitting in the cockpit at three in the morning wondering why the sea suddenly looks like somebody took a perfectly good ocean and put it in a blender.
That’s where the new Seven Seas University® Marine Weather Training Series comes in.
The Seven Seas Cruising Association (SSCA), working with Marine Weather Center (MWXC) and Chief Forecaster Chris Parker, has put together a complete 12-seminar marine weather course designed specifically for people who actually take boats out on the water.
The live series began July 28 and concludes September 8, 2026. And this isn’t just another pile of webinars that disappears into the electronic graveyard after you’ve watched them once.
It’s a course.
A real course.
It starts with the basics and works its way toward the stuff that matters when you’re looking at a forecast and trying to decide whether you’re going sailing, staying in the anchorage, or making damn sure the coffee pot is secured.
THE 12-SEMINAR COURSE PATH
1. Weather 100 — Energy Transfer and Basic Concepts
Energy, pressure, wind, global circulation, the ITCZ, and trade winds. In other words, why the atmosphere does what it does instead of simply behaving itself.
2. Weather 101 — Large-Scale Weather Events and Systems
Highs, lows, ridges, troughs, fronts, and surface-weather patterns. Learn what you’re looking at before you start arguing with the forecast.
3. Weather 102 — How Upper-Air Weather Influences Surface Weather
500-mb patterns, upper-air flow, convergence and divergence, troughs, and ridges. Because what happens upstairs can make your day considerably more interesting downstairs.
4. Weather 201 — Importance of Lift, Convection, and Thermodynamics
Rising air, instability, clouds, squalls, thunderstorms, and convection. This is the part where “that cloud looks kind of interesting” can become a really bad weather strategy.
5. Weather 202 — Smaller-Scale Weather Events and How to Anticipate Them
Meso- and microscale weather, sea and land breezes, terrain, funneling, katabatic winds, and coastal effects. The weather you get at your boat isn’t always the weather you saw on the big-picture forecast.
6. Weather 203 — Numerical Weather Forecasts, Part 1
How computer models work, what they do well, and where they can lead you astray. Computers are incredibly useful. They are also capable of being confidently wrong.
7. Weather 203 — Numerical Weather Forecasts, Part 2
Model comparison, uncertainty, forecast evolution, and practical onboard use. The trick isn’t finding a forecast you like. It’s understanding what the forecasts are actually telling you.
8. Weather 301 — Waves and Seas: Drivers, Behavior, and Vessel Impacts
Wind waves, swell, period, steepness, fetch, current, shoaling, comfort, safety, and route timing. Because wind speed is only part of the story. Ask anyone who’s ever had a beam sea kick the hell out of a boat.
9. Weather 400 — Weather Routing: What a Router Does and How to Think Like One
Routing decisions, alternatives, vessel considerations, and when professional routing can add value. It’s about more than drawing a line between two dots on a chart.
10. Weather 401 — Forecast Resources and Communications, Part 1
Text, graphics, observations, gridded data, model displays, and choosing a practical weather toolkit.
11. Weather 401 — Forecast Resources and Communications, Part 2
Bandwidth, communications options, delivery methods, backup planning, and getting weather information aboard when you actually need it.
12. Weather 402 — Creating and Using a Forecast for Your Boat
The capstone. Put it all together: observations, official products, models, local effects, vessel limitations, and decision points. The goal is to build a weather briefing you can actually use on your own boat.
THIS ISN’T JUST A BOX OF WEBINARS
One of the things that makes this program different is that Seven Seas University is turning the live seminars into a course package you can keep coming back to.
You’ll have recorded instruction, syllabi, participant workbooks, and guided-learning resources. Selected sessions also include timestamped video indexes, cruiser reference guides, and supplemental materials.
That’s important because nobody absorbs twelve weather seminars perfectly the first time through.
You watch something.
You think you’ve got it.
Then six months later you’re staring at a forecast in some anchorage wondering, “Now what the hell did Parker say about that?”
Now you can go back and find it.
The progression is intentional. First you learn why weather happens. Then you learn to recognize the large-scale and upper-air patterns. From there you get into convection, local effects, numerical models, waves, routing, communications, and finally the part that really counts: taking all that information and using it to make a decision for your boat, your crew, and your passage.
That’s the whole point.
Weather knowledge isn’t supposed to make you sound smarter at the dock.
It’s supposed to help you make better decisions when the dock is a long way behind you.
Purchase the complete course package at:
www.ssca.org/
“Seven Seas University is designed to turn expert instruction into practical education that cruisers can return to again and again. This series takes students from the fundamentals all the way to applying weather information to a real boat and a real cruising decision.”
— Joan Conover, President, Seven Seas Cruising Association
FOR CRUISERS AT EVERY EXPERIENCE LEVEL
If you’re new to cruising, the early seminars give you the foundation you need to understand what’s going on around you.
If you’ve been cruising for years, the later sessions give you another set of tools for forecasting, passage planning, weather routing, communications, and decision-making.
And that’s really what good weather education ought to do.
It shouldn’t just tell you whether it’s going to rain Tuesday.
It should help you understand why the weather is doing what it’s doing, how certain that forecast really is, what other information you should check, and what all of it means for the particular boat you’re standing on.
Because there is no such thing as “the weather.”
There’s the weather where you are, at the time you’re there, in the boat you’re in, with the crew you’ve got aboard.
That’s the weather that matters.
Course access and package information are available through Seven Seas Cruising Association at www.ssca.org. SSCA members also receive access to the organization’s growing collection of Seven Seas University educational resources and member benefits.
ABOUT SSCA AND SEVEN SEAS UNIVERSITY®
Founded in 1952, the Seven Seas Cruising Association is an international organization of cruisers helping cruisers. SSCA supports boaters through education, communications, cruising support, advocacy, and a worldwide network of members and Cruising Station Hosts.
Seven Seas University® is SSCA’s program for practical cruiser training and continuing education.
ABOUT MARINE WEATHER CENTER
Marine Weather Center (MWXC) specializes in practical marine-weather forecasting and education for cruisers, passagemakers, and offshore sailors.
Chris Parker, Chief Forecaster, began forecasting for cruisers full-time in 2002 and founded Marine Weather Center in 2011. His background combines formal meteorological study with extensive liveaboard and cruising experience in the Bahamas, Caribbean, Bermuda, and along the U.S. East Coast.
That combination gives the series something every cruiser can appreciate: weather information connected to what actually happens when you’re out there, rather than weather theory floating around in an ivory tower somewhere.
Learn more at www.mwxc.com.
MEDIA / PROGRAM INFORMATION
Seven Seas Cruising Association
