Picking a Route Across the North Atlantic
posted by John & Phyllis
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Question: [edited for brevity] We're planning to sail from New York to Falmouth (UK) leaving around May 18th.
Our plan is to sail WSW out from New York till we hit the Gulf Stream and then attempt to sail the great circle to Falmouth. We're debating whether to consider a more southerly route to stay clear of weather systems? Any views?
Answer: This type of question (asking for a suggested route for a trans-Atlantic passage) has come up several times lately so I’m going to deal with it in some detail. Route planning, particularly in the North Atlantic, is a dynamic process that starts before departure and continues throughout the passage since the best route is continuously changing depending on the state of several factors.
The goal is to come up with a route that, as far as practical, keeps the sailboat: south of low pressure systems, so that the wind is fair; north of the Bermuda/Azores high, so there is wind; and clear of the ice to the east of Newfoundland. Also, if it does not require too large a course alteration and does not conflict with the first criteria, it would be good if the route took advantage of the Gulf Stream and any attendant eddies but without risking getting into a wind-against-current situation.
I’m going to explain the process by using real data from today (click on maps to enlarge) and write about how I would react to it. All of this data can be accessed at sea using weather fax and some method of receiving data files like an Iridium phone or Sailmail over SSB radio. None of this needs to be horribly expensive: Equipment costs are in the range of US$1000 to US$4000 and data costs from zero to less than five dollars a day—almost certainly less than that of the wear and tear on your boat that getting hammered several times would probably cause.
But before I start, a couple of cautions:
- Because this is a relatively short article, I will be radically oversimplifying. This article will not make you a competent voyaging sailboat router. It is only intended to illustrate the process. If you want to learn to do this properly, we recommend the Starpath Weather Trainer and Weather Predicting Simplified by Michael Carr.
- As the second chart shows, the North Atlantic, even in late spring and summer, can be a rough place. No amount of weather routing will save you from every gale and storm. If you and your boat are not prepared to withstand a multi-day gale or even a storm, you should not cross the North Atlantic by any route.
Monitor the path of lows
Using weather fax you can monitor the position of the Jet Stream (top map) and particularly the 564mb contour (in bold). As you can see by comparing the two maps, lows and particularly gales generally follow about the same path as this contour. The Jet Stream is a long way south at the moment so I would stay well south too.
As the lows rumble up on my port (hopefully) quarter I would then use GRIB wind field and pressure files (not shown) to refine my course to try, as far as possible, to stay close enough to the lows to have good fair winds but far enough away to avoid gale or storm force winds. As I got further east I would watch the position of the Bermuda/Azores high to make sure I did not get too far into it and lose the wind.
Look out for the Gulf Stream
Since we are cruising and not racing, I would deemphasize the Gulf Stream except to make sure that I did not inadvertently get into a wind-against-current situation. I can tell you from my ocean racing navigator days that given the choice of sailing toward a fair current or a fair wind, the fair wind wins every time. Of course both at once are nice.
I would be careful of the Gulf Stream. As you can see on the chart, it is not just a nice simple river of water heading the way we want to go. There are plenty of eddies and meanders that can deliver a foul current and even 30 knots of wind apposing the current will quickly generate truly dangerous breaking seas. There is also a higher chance of thunder storms and other violent weather in the Stream due to temperature differentials.
Stay out of ice
As you can see, the ice is a long way south at the moment. In fact, this is one of the worst ice seasons in years.
I would stay south of the ice line. Even if the ice was further north, I would stay well south of the Grand Banks, to avoid excessive fog. Though I am experienced in both ice and fog, life is too short to go looking for trouble just to save a few miles.
So in summary and going back to your original question, your basic strategy is a good one and yes, given all the factors above, I would stay well south of the great circle. In fact I would not even think about the great circle. Getting stuck in one gale on the nose for several days will more than wipe out any gains to be had from a shorter distance.
Labels: Passage Planning
Rode Size for a Galerider Drogue
posted by John & Phyllis
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Question: Would you recommend 3/4" or 1" rode for use with a Galerider Drogue for a 46 foot 33,000lb cutter?
Answer: I would think that 3/4" would be adequate, but you should check with the manufacturer who should know what the loads generated by each Galerider size are. With that piece of data in hand you can then size the rode. I would allow at least a 100% safety factor since nylon rope's strength can degrade quickly with chafe and sun damage.
By the way, we far prefer the Jordan Series Drogue over the Galerider (see this post), unless you will be using the Galerider, as we have, off the bow.
Labels: Seamanship
Atlantic Crossing, Picking a Go Date
posted by John & Phyllis
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Question: [edited for brevity] I’m planning an Atlantic Crossing from Boston to Scotland. How can I recognize the best moment weather wise to leave for the safest crossing?
Answer: Since weather forecasts are only accurate for about four days, at best, there is no way to manage the weather for an entire crossing of that length by picking a given day to leave. This means that you and your boat should be capable of withstanding at least one multi-day gale and on that route there is the possibility, albeit small, of a full blown North Atlantic storm, even in summer. (For more details on the best months to leave, see this post.)
Having said that, you do want to try and pick a leaving date that will give you several days of good weather and fair winds so that the crew can settle down and get their sea legs. (See this article for more on our thinking about managing crew comfort.)
Generally the best departure days from the US east coast are immediately, and I do mean immediately, after a cold front goes through. This will normally give you clear weather and northwest winds as the following high pressure moves in. Of course this is based on averages and should not be taken as gospel.
You can also get a feel for how the systems are moving by analyzing the 500mb (jet steam) reports for several weeks before you leave, but to do this you will require an in-depth knowledge of weather theory and forecasting. A good idea anyway since you will have a much more comfortable, and probably safer, trip if someone on the boat has this level of knowledge and you install the necessary equipment to receive GRIB files and weather maps.
To gain a good grounding in weather theory, we recommend the Starpath Weather Trainer, an excellent computer based program learning package.
Labels: Passage Planning
Comments about Parachute Anchors from New Zealand
posted by John & Phyllis
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Our heavy weather series continues to attract interesting comments and suggested alternatives from experienced ocean voyagers. This one comes from Lane and Kay Finley who have a lot of ocean experience and make films about sailing, which are mostly sold in NZ and Australia. They also have a great web site with lots of good information.
“During the filming we launched a parachute anchor according to the manufacturer’s recommendations. It was a rather breezy day, but not storm conditions. Even in these mild conditions, the strain and stress that was generated to our boat’s substantial deck fittings was huge. We came away wondering what vessel could stand up to a real storm when tied to one of these anchors.
We decided we would not carry one onboard as we would rather take our chances running with warps, as this has worked well for us in several situations in the past. However, to bring it [the sea anchor] aboard, we merely cast it loose and then motored around to the top of it and picked up the trip line, which was floated on a buoy. It came onboard with no trouble.”
There are two interesting points in the above:
- It confirms our concerns about the stresses imposed by sea anchors.
- Casting off the main warp prior to picking up the trip line will reduce the chances of a tangle or getting a line around the rudder or propeller and makes a lot of sense.
Lane and Kay go on to say:
Just a note on warps and drogues: We have an 18mm (3/4”) garden hose onboard that is 25 meters long. When we begin sliding down the front of 10 meter seas we take the coiled up hose with the two ends threaded together, pass a 200 meter nylon rode through the coil and throw it off the stern with one end of the line on the starboard primary winch and the other end on the port primary winch. Because the garden hose has no flat surfaces (like a tire) it lies just under the surface of the water, does not have to be weighted and will not pop out and skip. It slows the boat down to around four knots and gives us complete control. There is no worry about chaffing because, well it’s a garden hose. When we want to bring it in, or adjust the length, we just wind in on the primary winches and because the line is in a loop, there is a two to one purchase in our favour. When we get to the next port, we use it to wash the boat down and fill our water tanks. Don’t laugh – it’s the best drogue we have ever found! We used it in the Queen’s Day Storm in 1994, 85 knots and 16 metre seas. [One of the worst storms to hit a fleet of sailboats in history.] It worked a treat!Who would have thought, a garden hose! Just shows that being innovative and keeping the goal in mind, rather than fixating on gear, can solve a lot of problems offshore.
Labels: Seamanship
Best Time for West to East Atlantic Crossing
posted by John & Phyllis
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Question: [edited for brevity] I will be sailing to Gibraltar from the Chesapeake via the Azores. When would be the best time to leave and when would be the earliest I could/should leave?
Answer: This is a pretty standard west to east Atlantic crossing. The best time to leave the east coast of North America is late May to mid-June. The earliest is probably mid-May, although leaving that early will increase your chances of a gale.
The latest date to go is dictated by the onset of the hurricane season. Ten years ago I would have said that mid-July or even late July was the latest time to leave, but we are definitely seeing more frequent and more intense hurricanes in June and July than we did then, so now I would say the end of June is the latest prudent date.
For more information you should consult the excellent Atlantic Crossing Guide, published by the RCC Pilotage Foundation.
Labels: Passage Planning
Life Rafts
posted by John & Phyllis
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Question: What sort of life raft do you have on Morgan’s Cloud?
Answer: We have a RFD Beaufort 6-person commercial SOLAS raft.
The advantage of this raft is that Revere and RFD Beaufort are partners in it: Revere in the USA and RFD Beaufort for the rest of the world. Or at least that seems to be how it works, although you can buy a RFD Beaufort in the USA too. Anyway, this means that you can get these rafts serviced at any of some 300 RFD Beaufort service stations anywhere in the world as well as at Revere stations in the USA. For example, there are 23 service depots in Norway.
Contrast that to many of the American-built rafts from companies like Swilick, Winslow or Givens that can only be serviced in major yachting centers. This is not a trivial issue if you plan to sail to out-of-the-way places, as we found to our cost when we had to ship our old Givens to the UK from Norway to get it serviced—the shipping cost twice what the service did.
Having said that, I’m not sure that the RFD Beaufort is as good a raft as the top of the line offerings from the above companies. It was certainly a lot cheaper, even though we opted for a commercial quality raft that is SOLAS certified. However, we are comfortable with the RFD because, in our opinion, the most likely scenarios which would force us into the raft are fire or flooding, not extreme weather. Frankly, we think it unlikely that we would make it into the raft alive in a storm strong enough to overwhelm Morgan’s Cloud, so whether or not the RFD is the ultimate storm survival raft is academic to us.
Labels: Equipment
Radar Scanner Position
posted by John & Phyllis
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Question: [edited for brevity]
What is your preference regarding the best place to mount a radar antenna? As far as we can tell from the pictures of Morgan’s Cloud you have mounted yours on a pole aft.
Our previous experience with radars tells us that the antenna should be as high and free as possible. Wouldn't a radar antenna mounted on the mast just above the first spreaders give better range and a more detailed radar picture than if it were mounted lower?
It also appears from the pictures that your antenna isn't mounted in a way that makes it able to tilt so that it can compensate for heel of the boat when sailing?
Answer: First off we should say that we view radar as the most important piece of electronic equipment on Morgan’s Cloud—yes, more important than GPS, since we can find our way with a compass and sextant but we can’t see unlit objects at night or through fog—so we have given a lot of thought to the position and installation of our radar scanner.
We prefer a pole mounted aft for the scanner over mast mounting for the following reasons:
- The scanner is much less vulnerable to damage from an errant halyard or sail.
- We do not agree that a higher position for the scanner is a significant benefit. Small targets, like buoys, don’t show much over a mile regardless of scanner height and large targets, like ships, show at 10 miles—plenty of room to plot and take avoiding action—with our current scanner height. In fact I think that putting the scanner substantially higher than ours can be a disadvantage since it will be subjected to more motion in a seaway.
- A scanner on the mast is more difficult to service than one on a pole and heaven help you if the cable needs replacing.
- Mast mounted radars are very vulnerable to damage when the mast is un-stepped.
- We don’t like the added weight aloft. Sure it’s not that much, but with the lever arm, every pound counts.
About the only advantage I can think of for a mast mount would be a theoretically less impeded view forward. However, in the real world we have never found that there was any appreciable radar shadow cast by the mast and rigging.
Our radar scanner can be inclined to compensate for heel using a clever system based on a speedboat
hydraulic trim tab pump and
actuator. We got ours from
Edson, although a reasonably handy owner could duplicate our system, by buying the gear directly, for a fraction of what Edson charges.
We would not be without this tilt feature since it is just plain dangerous to sail around with a huge radar blind spot on either side of the boat when heeled. This was graphically brought home to me the second year I owned
Morgan’s Cloud (before we installed our incline system) when we were nearly run down in thick fog by a trawler that we only saw at 100 yards and that visually, not on radar, approaching from our port beam. Yes, I know we had the right of way but with huge steel trawlers traveling at 10 knots that is scant comfort!
Incidentally, we far prefer our manually controlled (using a switch in the cockpit) inclining system to gimbled backstay systems like the
Questus. Our thinking is that no matter how well damped the latter is, there are just too many bend cycles being put on the cable. Also, back stays are prone to vibration, surely not a good thing for sensitive electronics.
Labels: Equipment
Using weather fax you can monitor the position of the Jet Stream (top map) and particularly the 564mb contour (in bold). As you can see by comparing the two maps, lows and particularly gales generally follow about the same path as this contour. The Jet Stream is a long way south at the moment so I would stay well south too.
As you can see, the ice is a long way south at the moment. In fact, this is one of the worst ice seasons in years.
