weather forecast question

i was looking at the forecast and then the sea area forecast on met eireanns web site
yesterday, the thing is they are completely contradictory, can anyone explain,
in other words if i looked at the sea are forecast for today i would be expecting a force 6,
but the national forecast on the same site light winds?

Sea Area Forecast until 1800 Sunday 14 December 2008
Issued at 1800 Saturday 13 December 2008
Forecast for all coasts of Ireland and for the Irish Sea - Wind:
Northwest to north force 3 or 4, locally force 5 on western coasts;
veering north force 4 or 5 on Sunday morning and reaching force 6 at
times along the south coast. Weather: Wintry showers on northern and
western coasts, a few thundery, and outbreaks of rain or sleet on east
Ulster coasts later; otherwise, mainly fair. Visibility: Good,
occasionally moderate in rain or heavy showers. Warning of heavy swell
on northern and western coasts.

National Forecast
13 December 2008 16:06
Today
Occasional showers in coastal counties of Connacht, West Munster and
west Ulster, some of sleet or snow. Elsewhere, mainly dry, with clear
spells. However, frost and fog patches lingering in parts of the
midlands and east will become widespread early tonight and some icy
patches will form overnight. Lowest temperatures 0 to -4 degrees
Celsius.
Tomorrow
Staying very cold on Sunday, with frost and fog clearing only slowly,
but dry and bright apart from a few wintry showers near Atlantic
coasts and the risk of some rain or sleet in east Ulster. Light winds
throughout. Highest temperatures 3 to 6 degrees Celsius.

I use Forecastfox, (http://forecastfox.mozdev.org/) a browser addon for Mozilla Firefox for years now. It gives you a fairly accurate outlook and is always at your fingertips when you are online. The Addon doesn't work with IE though, you need to use Firefox as your main web browser. But it's all free and comes highly recommended

WIND GURU OR MAGIC SEAWEED ARE VERY GOOD WEBSITES FOR WIND PREDICTION,HOWEVER IF YOU LOOK AT THE COASTAL VARIATIONS YOU SHOULD NOTE IRELAND SUFFERS FROM ANTI-CYCLONIC WIND PATTERNS.IT IS QUITE COMMON FOR DIFFERENT WEATHER AND WIND STRENGTS IN SOUTHERN/WESTERN AREAS COMPARED TO THE EAST COAST.THE SEA AREA FORECAST ON MET EIREANN IS THE ONE I GO BY AND IGNORE THE ORDINARY WEATHER FORECAST.

We tend to use windguru most of the time as it seems to be more accurate for a given area than Met Eireann, fishing mostly east coast area.Best to compare a few different sites though?

JW, I use www.xcweather.co.uk and find it the best of the lot, I gave up on met.ie a long time ago. xc is the site that a lot of pilots use, and it gives you the forecast at the rigs and the weather bouys, invaluable for a wrecking trip.
Dave