Measurements of average normalized backscatter made from a platform in the North Sea 10 km off the Dutch coast are reported here. The measurements provide information on the dependency of X band backscatter on grazing angle, wind speed, and look direction. It has been found that for grazing angles under 50¿ the dependency of backscatter on wind speed is highly sensitive to polarization and look direction. Also an unexplained difference between ground-based and airborne measurements was observed.