The Weather

As you can imagine the weather has a huge bearing on where and when you sail.  There are three main factors which are crucial to the skipper when deciding to set sail:

• Wind strength and direction
• Temperature and conditions e.g. fog; rain; sun etc
• Sea state

Each of the above can contribute to the success of a passage plan but the wind direction can be the most frustrating.  On a short trip you can motor or tack against a head wind but for a cruising sailor on a longer passage this is often not practical/desirable so you end up delaying and delaying, waiting for a favourable wind direction.

The skipper of a yacht has to have ready access to weather forecasts for the area.  20 years ago you basically only had the BBC and its' shipping forecast (for the UK) but over the years the maritime authorities world wide have developed a system called GMDSS (Global maritime distress and safety system) and this includes a radio based system called NAVTEX.  Basically navtex sends out a text message containing any safety and weather information in your area.  Typically you'll get the shipping forecast and the inshore waters forecast along with loads of information about other maritime issues in your area.  Buoys that have been moved, ships in distress, firing times for ordnance testing along the coasts etc.  So if you are within transmission range of one of the NAVTEX stations, and if you have a navtex receiver you can get a weather view for a period giving a 24 hour forecast and an outlook for the following 24hrs.  On channel crossings you will also get the French equivalents of our shipping and inshore forecasts.

However with the advent of tinternet there is a whole myriad of other specialised sailing weather sites that you can look up if you have a connection via 3G or WIFI so it stands to reason that the main topic of conversation in the marinas is the weather.  Yachties comparing notes on which forecasts they've seen and which they trust.  Most get it right some of the time and wrong some of the time but there seems to be a shift this year that has caught many holiday sailors by surprise.

The English Channel during the summer months would normally present sailors with a south-westerly air flow generated by high pressure over the Azores working in tandem with depressions flowing over the north Atlantic and Scotland - if you stand with your back to the wind the low pressure is always on your left (Buys Ballot's law) hence the SW wind.  This year we have had high pressure regions much further north one over Ireland and one over Scandinavia causing a squeeze and resulting in a northerly airflow blowing across the channel making it difficult for sailors to cross from Brittany to the UK.

Our crossing was being delayed so I e-mailed Simon Keeling (a TV weather specialist who has an interest in sailing) and asked if he had any idea when we might get a westerly or south-westerly and he replied saying early a.m. on Thursday 29th Aug but that it would only last for about 1 or 2 days so we decided that that was the day to choose for our crossing otherwise we would be stuck for at least another week.

We left Roscoff at about 1600 French time on a passage of about 140 nautical miles to Studland Bay near Poole where we eventually anchored at approximately midnight on Friday 30th. a trip of 28 hours.