Liars, Damn Liars, And Sailors

by John October 1, 2007

My friend Kevin is tough. Tough enough that I have heard him called Kevlar. A veteran of tens of thousands of ocean miles, both racing and cruising, Kevin has seen some seriously nasty weather.

Weather Routing And The Skipper’s Responsibility

by John May 1, 2008

Several times in the last year people have said things to me like “Oh, he lost his boat because the weather router screwed up” and “We got a real dusting and did a lot of damage because the weather forecast was wrong”. At first I just nodded and said, “Sorry to hear that” or something [...]

Picking A Weather Window For A West To East Atlantic Crossing

by John May 18, 2008
Starpath Weather Trainer computer-based learning program.

Question: 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?

Commander’s Weather

by John May 19, 2008

When we have a tough passage to make, particularly early or late in the season, and we need expert advice on picking a weather window, we call Commander’s Weather. They provide excellent individualized forecasts and routing advice, based on information we give them on boat speed, preferences, etc. We still make the final decision on [...]

WeatherFax 2000

by John May 19, 2008
A weather fax surface forecast map of the North Atlantic.

We are long time users of WeatherFax 2000, from Xaxero Marine Software Engineering Ltd in New Zealand, for the reception of weather faxes on a Windows PC.

Risk Management, Hurricanes

by John July 18, 2008

Question [received July 11, 2008]: We’re in St. John’s, Newfoundland, waiting to cross to Scotland. We’re just about ready to go and the weather forcast is good for leaving. However, Hurricane Bertha is just south of Bermuda. The current forecast is for her to weaken to 55 knots within four to five days, and stay [...]

Radio Fear

by John February 1, 2009

Morgan’s Cloud was anchored in a snug cove in Maine. We had tied everything down on deck and stripped the headsails from the furlers. Hurricane Kyle was bearing down on the coast with forecast 60 knot winds, gusting higher; no worse than we have ridden out many times before in high latitude anchorages, so we [...]

Jenifer Clark’s Gulfstream

by John May 19, 2009

Sailing to Bermuda this fall? Get your weather information wherever you like; there is a huge amount available for free on the Internet.

Death Of A Good Friend To Voyaging Sailors

by John March 25, 2010

Over the last few years, we noticed that US weather forecasters have been forecasting higher winds, even hurricane force, in specific and well defined areas of mid-latitude low pressure systems with increased frequency and accuracy than before, but we did not know how they were doing it. Now we do.

Hurricane Resources

by John August 30, 2010
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I have lived most of my life in the direct line of fire of Atlantic hurricanes, first in Bermuda, and now on the southern shore of Nova Scotia. But no matter how familiar I am with the damned things, or perhaps because of that familiarity, I always have a slight feeling of constant tension at [...]

Hurricane Forecasts, Sausage Or Sizzle

by John September 1, 2010
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It is now pretty likely that Hurricane Earl will give us high winds here on the south-western shore of Nova Scotia. However, a deviation of just 50 miles either side of the forecast track will likely make the difference between us experiencing gale force versus hurricane force winds. And that in turn will determine whether [...]

Earl Comes To Lunch

by John September 4, 2010

Hurricanes, you just can’t trust em. When we went to bed Earl was supposed to make landfall on the west side of the province, some 80 miles away. But this morning he has wobbled east and is heading straight for us here on the southwestern shore of Nova Scotia.

Tropical Storm Earl Photographs

by John September 5, 2010
JHH5-12258

While Earl was a pretty minor storm by hurricane standards by the time it reached us, we still saw steady winds of over 50 knots with gusts well into the 60s—a lot of wind by any standard. Everything held up fine on Morgan’s Cloud, including a new and better way to attach the boat to [...]

Enough With The Northeast Wind

by John June 17, 2011
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Over the last 20 years I have sailed north toward Newfoundland from Maine or Nova Scotia more years than not and I thought I knew how to get it done:

Weather, The Importance Of The Big Picture

by John September 6, 2011
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[Written Saturday, 27 August] The image above is a screen shot from Jim Corenman’s excellent View Fax application (available for free from Sailmail) showing a GRIB for the winds for the Labrador Coast for Tuesday, three days hence. As you can see the model is forecasting strong to gale force northeasterly winds, but no big [...]

Lessons From Maria

by John September 29, 2011
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[Written 17 September] As I write the wind from the remnants of Hurricane Maria, or to be more accurate at our location, post-Tropical Storm Maria, is howling in the rigging as Morgan’s Cloud surges and tugs at the shore-fast and anchor holding her secure in a cove in north Newfoundland. The winds are down to [...]

Weather, How To Look Ahead—Way Ahead

by John October 6, 2011
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In the last few weeks I have posted on weather twice: The importance of looking at the big picture. Recognizing the possibility of dangerous weather well ahead of time. In this post I’m going to talk about one of the weather tools that I mentioned in those two posts.

Duelling GRIB Viewers

by John October 15, 2011
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I have written several posts lately on weather and each has mentioned GRIBs. In this post I’m going to get into the nuts and bolts of the software we use to view GRIB data.

Our Weather System, Part 1—Weather Fax

by John October 27, 2011
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In my last few posts on weather I have been writing about various aspects of weather analysis. In the next three posts I’m going to pull it all together by detailing the daily procedure that we found worked well during our Arctic cruise this summer. In part one I’m going to cover weather fax, part [...]

Our Weather System, Part 2—GRIBs

by John November 17, 2011
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This is the second in a series of three posts on the system that we developed during our Arctic cruise this summer to do our daily weather analysis. In the first post I wrote about the way we use weather fax. In this one I’m going to get into the details of how we request [...]

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