It's Thursday afternoon and you really want to head to the boat this weekend for some Saturday sailing. Problem is, there hasn't been a breath of wind all week. Before firming up your plans, head to the Web for some great marine weather information.

NOAA has text-based marine forecasts for all coastal U.S. waters. In addition, the web site has satellite imagery and real-time buoy reports. These give wind speed and wave height at coastal and offshore weather buoys. For inland sailors, the NOAA site has good local and regional forecasts and warnings.

For a more visual forecast, grab a GRIB. Grid In Binary weather files are compressed numerical forecasts predicting -- among other things -- wind speed and direction.

When watched through a standalone viewer installed on your computer, the file becomes animated arrows showing predicted wind speed and direction at selected intervals (usually one to three hours) over a several day period (up to seven).

Grib.us (registration required for full access) offers a free web-based GRIB viewer with a zoom-in worldwide to local selection tool.