The weather gave us a slight breather Thursday afternoon, so
we met Blaine at the marina bar broke out the laptops and worked through a
series of weather planning sites.
For
this one, we used Sailflow (excellent visual representation of wind, pressure,
and sea state.
This appears to be
gathered from a variety of sources, including NOAA and the way it’s displayed
is easy on the eyes).
We also used the
NOAA site (weather.gov) most of the information you need is there but it can be
hard to sort through.
They use a
completely different format for the offshore forecast and the various coastal
areas that I find cumbersome to navigate.
Once you get to the info it’s a very simple text format.
Not much granularity but good for the big
picture.
We also used passageweather.com,
which is a recommendation I got a while back from Cruisers Forum and find
useful.
Yes it’s gribs files, and yes I
understand that gribs are not always the be all end all of weather forecasts
but, so far they’ve been good for things like wind/wave direction, as well as a
general feel for strength.
Our concern
was that we really wanted to get across in a generally North West direction
from the Tampa Bay channel to somewhere just off shore of New Orleans or
Mobile.
In a sailboat this can be a
challenge in a strong North wind since most boats don’t like to sail upwind
closer than 45-50 degrees on the wind.
We’ve noticed that in a light sea 50-55 degrees is doable but 60 is more
comfortable if the seas are a bit heavier.
We didn’t sea anything huge (or we wouldn’t have gone) but where seeing
regular projections of 3-5 and 4-6ft seas.
This alone isn’t all that big but unfortunately the period (time between
successive wave crests) was showing to be in the 3-5 second range.
All that really means is it was going to be a
very bumpy ride and with the waves so close together we would likely struggle
getting our comfy 25,000lb boat to come close enough to the wind to get the NW
route we’d like.
It was looking like WNW
was about the best we could do.
Some of
the models did show the wind shifting from NW and N to a more NE direction late
Friday and then on Sat shifting to East, which would be close to perfect, minus
the seas.
But as they say, welcome to
the Gulf…in January
We really wanted to ensure we didn’t get stuck out in the
gulf for an extended period of time waiting for a wind shift, so we decided to
wait for the morning weather update to make the final call. Kara and I made it an early night, filled
tanks and just organized everything for the passage so we’d be ready if we
could in fact leave. We also needed to
be worried about the tide. Thursday AM
thanks to that strong N/NW winds in the 30-40 knot range, Baboo was actually
sitting on the bottom in her slip. Glad
we don’t have a bolt on keel. We talked
to several of the liveaboards in the marina who where also aground in their
slips and evidently this was a very uncommon occurrence. The day before we backed Baboo into her slip
(really cleanly I might add) right at low tide and had plenty of
clearance. Evidently the heavy winds Wed
night and all day Thursday had literally blown the water out of the bay, so
that low tide was much lower than normal.
The conditions had been improving Thursday afternoon and we suspected
Friday AM we’d be clear of the bottom.
If not, we’d be in our slip until later in the day, regardless of what
we wanted to do.
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