{"id":6395,"date":"2016-12-17T12:31:56","date_gmt":"2016-12-17T17:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=6395"},"modified":"2016-12-17T12:31:56","modified_gmt":"2016-12-17T17:31:56","slug":"crews-ready-weather-not-so-sure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=6395","title":{"rendered":"Crew’s ready. Weather? Not so sure."},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, here we are on December 17th, a little more than two weeks until I rendezvous with my crew in Beaufort to, as Chris Parker says, “exit the US East Coast” to head down to the BVI.<\/p>\n

I am very lucky to have a great crew for the run. \u00a0Leading the charge will be Jim, who’s sailed something like 5,000 miles with me, the most of anybody except Brenda, of course. \u00a0 And, it was through Jim that I was introduced to Jerry and Dave, also from Jim’s area in VA. \u00a0Jim is a cruiser like me but Jerry and Dave are both\u00a0racers, inshore and offshore so the combined experience will be good.<\/p>\n

My plan is to leave CT on January 2nd with a rental car and make my way south. Along the way I’ll likely stop and see my new Granddaughter Tori (short for Victoria) as I make my way through MD. \u00a0She was born December 12th in case you were wondering. \u00a0Her father Rob, our oldest, told her about my plans to stop by on my way to Pandora. \u00a0At first she said “Grandpy who?”. \"\"The she suddenly remembered “Oh, you mean my favorite paternal Grandpy! \u00a0Yes, I remember him!”\u00a0\u00a0\"\"Can you believe that she already knows the word, paternal? \u00a0 Smart girl. \u00a0 We had a onsie made up for her that says “Pandora Crew”. \u00a0Good to start the training early. \u00a0Picture of her in uniform to come soon. \u00a0Right Rob? \u00a0I know how much she loves being dressed and changed into new clothes. \u00a0All that crying is really\u00a0her trying to say “TAKE ME SAILING GRANDPY”. \u00a0Not certain on the spelling of Grandpy. \u00a0Spell check only pulls up Granny and that’s not working\u00a0for me.<\/p>\n

Ok, ok, enough baby pictures but I was talking about crew so Tori counts. \u00a0Sorry Jim, she’s going to be serious competition down the road. \u00a0Actually, by the time she’s old enough… Well, I don’t want to think about that right now. \u00a0I’m thinking one of those peddle boats. \u00a0Nooooo…..<\/p>\n

I won’t think about that now. \u00a0So, back to “exiting the US East Coast”. \u00a0 Chris Parker, the weather router that we use, does daily weather briefings six days a week and broadcasts on SSB radio as well as on the Web. \u00a0 We are still a bit far out to know what the weather will be the first week of January when we want to begin our run but it’s not too early to look at some high level trends in east coast weather.<\/p>\n

Chris told me that there seems to be a pattern of lows exiting the\u00a0coast about every five days or so and that they are not terribly strong with winds, say in the under 3o kt range. \u00a0 Yes, a mere zephyr. \u00a0That’s not bad as long as the winds are behind us, which they should be. \u00a0Yes, something to wish for.<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago Chris told me that he thought that my chances of getting out in the first week of January was about 75%. \u00a0Soon we will know.<\/p>\n

It’s interesting to see how quickly the wind patterns change day to day. \u00a0This may be “more than you want to know about penguins” but what follows is a series of 24 hour wind forecasts beginning at 06:00 UTC today. \u00a0That’s midnight EST today.<\/p>\n

So, beginning today… \u00a0Note that the yellow is the strongest wind at around 30kts with stronger gusts and the white 5kts or less. \u00a0 Today would not be a good day to get going as it’s blowing strong from the ESE and a low is just exiting the east coast south of Hatteras. \u00a0You probably know this but the “flags” point toward where the wind is coming from and each full “flag feather” represents 10kts of wind and a half feather, well, 5kts. \u00a0 The red line would be Pandora’s course and approximate 24 hour run distance. \u00a0The Gulf Stream in yellow. \u00a0Note that the “stream” comes pretty close to Hatteras and is deflected to the east at that point. \u00a0The very shallow waters off of Hatteras make\u00a0it a particularly nasty place to be when things kick up, especially with a north component wind. \u00a0 \u00a0That’s why they call it “the graveyard of the Atlantic”. \u00a0 Cheery thought.\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

On Sunday you can see that the wind is expected to shift more to the SSW. \u00a0This would still be a problem as our “apparent wind” (how it feels on board with the boat moving toward the wind) would be pretty far forward of the beam and would feel like 30kts or higher in gusts. \u00a0Not even a little bit\u00a0great.\u00a0\"\"24 hours later, midnight on Monday EST, the wind has again shifted back to the north. \u00a0 However, as you can see, the wind drops out about 24 hours into our run. \u00a0That’s when we would be south of the GS which goes very close to Hatteras. \u00a0still a nasty way to start the run.\u00a0\"\"So, Tuesday the winds are still strong from the NE. \u00a0Nope, still not a good time to cross the Gulf Stream.\u00a0\"\"Perhaps Wednesday could be a window to start out if we were ready as the winds are from the NW and not too strong.
\n\"\"Thursday the wind drops out so a departure might work even if it means motoring for the first day or two \u00a0Let’s see what Friday brings…\"\"Oops. \u00a0Friday again brings strong southerlies so the wind would be very far forward of the beam. \u00a0Pretty unpleasant and the pattern begins all over again.\u00a0\"\"So, what’s a crew to do? \u00a0 Well, this analysis suggests that there really isn’t a decent window in the next week. \u00a0However, the 4th or 5th of January is still a long way off so we will just have to wait and see what happens. \u00a0This exercise shows just how changeable the weather is in the winter months. \u00a0The key will be to get across the Gulf Stream and into more southerly waters before the next cold front moves off of the coast.<\/p>\n

It is quite interesting to see how different the weather patterns are in the winter verses spring. \u00a0I have generally found that getting a week long window with favorable winds heading north in the spring is pretty easy as the prevailing winds are from a southerly direction and the fronts don’t roll off of the coast nearly so frequently.<\/p>\n

I guess that’s about all for now and I’ll report back sometime next week to see how things look for the first week of January. \u00a0Ten days out we should at least be able to get an inkling of what lies ahead.<\/p>\n

Well, I was telling Tori about what it was like sailing in the Gulf Stream with wind from the north and she wasn’t amused. \u00a0\"\"So,I gave her back to her parents.<\/p>\n

I guess that about covers it for now. \u00a0 Stay tuned for more scintillating updates on weather and getting ready to head south. \u00a0I know that my crew is. \u00a0Perhaps not Tori but it’s to soon to tell what she’ll think when she’s bigger.<\/p>\n

Yes, I know this blog is about sailing. \u00a0Don’t worry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, here we are on December 17th, a little more than two weeks until I rendezvous with my crew in Beaufort to, as Chris Parker says, “exit the US East Coast” to head down to the BVI. I am very lucky to have a great crew for the run. \u00a0Leading the charge will be Jim, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","_s2mail":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6395"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6418,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6395\/revisions\/6418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}