Guide

How to read a bar report

Checked September 13, 2026 against the Coast Guard, the National Weather Service and federal rules.

The Bar conditions tile repeats what the Coast Guard reports for the entrances on this coast. Washington has four regulated bars and only three of them are reported. Here is what each word means, what it does not, and which entrance nobody watches.

The three that are reported

“Cape Disappointment” is the Coast Guard’s name for the Columbia River bar, after the headland the station watches it from. It is the bar the Long Beach Peninsula boats cross.

All three are staffed and reporting, each within hours when this page was last checked. The board prints the time of the report and how old it is, every time; a report more than 12 hours old reads as Unknown rather than as a status, because a stale bar report is the one reading on this site that could get somebody killed.

The fourth bar, which nobody reports

Willapa Bay is a regulated navigation area, and no one publishes a routine observation for it. Those two facts sit oddly together and both are true. The Coast Guard can restrict or close the Willapa entrance exactly as it can the other three, and crossing it while restricted breaks the same federal rule — but it is not on the National Weather Service’s bar observations page, so there is no recorded line to call and no status for the board to print.

So the tile says Not reported for the towns that go out through it — Tokeland, North Cove, Bay Center, Nahcotta and Oysterville, and Raymond and South Bend down the Willapa River — rather than lending them a neighbour’s report from a different entrance miles away. Not reported is not the same as open, and it is not the same as unregulated. For the Willapa bar the check is VHF-FM channel 16 or 22A, and your own eyes.

The open-beach towns have no entrance of their own at all: Long Beach, Seaview and Ocean Park on the peninsula, Grayland, and Copalis Beach, Pacific Beach, Moclips, Taholah and Kalaloch to the north. The board does not invent a bar for them.

What the words mean

• No restrictions. The Coast Guard had not restricted the bar when the report was made. It is not a promise that the bar is safe, and conditions on a bar can change within minutes.
• Restricted. Recreational vessels and uninspected passenger vessels — small charters — may not operate in the regulated area unless the Captain of the Port authorises it. This is federal law, not advice. The Captain of the Port weighs the size and type of vessel, sea state, winds, wave period and tidal currents in deciding.
• Closed. A bar is closed to all vessels when conditions exceed what the Coast Guard’s own search and rescue resources can operate in. Nothing crosses without specific authorisation.
• Unknown. There is no current report: the last one is more than 12 hours old, or the station is not reporting. Unknown is never an all-clear. Call the recorded line above.

The time and the words under it

Every report carries the time it was observed, and the board shows that time and how old it is. The paragraph under a report is the watchstander’s own description — swell in each part of the channel, wind, visibility — shown exactly as they typed it, capitals and typos included, because rewording a safety report is how meaning gets lost.

Before you cross

• Check the report before you leave the dock, and again before the crossing.
• Restrictions and closures are announced as a Broadcast Notice to Mariners on VHF-FM channels 16 and 22A. That is the only channel the Willapa bar has.
• When a restriction is in force for recreational vessels of your length, everyone in an open part of the boat must be wearing a lifejacket, and lifejackets must be readily accessible to anyone under cover. The same applies any time the Coast Guard is towing or escorting you across.
• Between sunset and sunrise, while such a restriction is in force, an uninspected passenger vessel must call the Coast Guard on channel 16 or 22A before crossing and give the vessel’s name, its position, how many people are aboard and where it is going.
• Check the marine forecast and the tide too: an ebb running against a big swell is when bars turn.

Sources

• National Weather Service, bar observations — the feed the board reads, and the page every phone number above was read from
• 33 CFR 165.1325, Regulated Navigation Areas: Bars Along the Coasts of Oregon and Washington — the rule that makes a restriction law, and the list that includes Quillayute River Entrance, Grays Harbor Entrance, Willapa Bay and the Columbia River Bar