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 [...]

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 [...]

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
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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
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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: