I agree that amatuer reports of wind speed and wave height are likely to be inaccurate, sometimes wildly so. I am not likely to stow my paddle and hold an anemometer over my head when things get rough.
All my kayaking stories have waves of only three heights; 0ne foot (lapping at the side of my boat), Three foot (the boat plunges over or through the wave), and Six foot (I can't see the paddler in front of me).
Learning the beufort scale to describe wind speed might help, but many of the clues the beufort scale uses (smoke, flags, tree branchs) are irrellavent out on the bay. Perhaps instead of reporting a wave height or windspeed we can't judge we should just report what the wind/waves were really doing.