Forecasting feets

Serendipity
David Caukill
Tue 23 Jun 2015 14:15

Tuesday  22  June, 2015

North Atlantic Ocean 47.33.3N 17.25.6W

Today's Blog by Richard  (Time zone: BST; UTC +1)

 

One expects a skipper to be highly skilled, authoritative, decisive and communicative. And David is no exception. No, really. He conscientiously downloads and reviews each day’s weather forecast, bemoans the inaccuracy of the previous forecast and painstakingly explains to us what is actually going to happen ……………….. in his opinion.

 

He also shares some of this with you in his blog. Avid blog readers and analysers may have spotted the odd inconsistency recently, as have the crew. On Sunday at 20:23, we were offered the following authoritative statement: “The cold front will come through tomorrow [Monday] afternoon, it will dump on us and the wind will the veer and go light for about half a day.”

 

All this was quickly forgotten in his crisp instructions to us on Monday evening: “The [same] cold front will come through overnight, during Richard’s watch [the death watch – 2 to 5 am, of course]. The wind will veer1, which means we will have to gybe  …. in this direction2 ….. to maintain course, so Richard will have to get Peter out of bed to do this as we can’t have a man on the foredeck on his own at night”.

 

I am writing this at noon on Tuesday and the confident prediction is that the [same] cold front will come through this afternoon, on David’s watch. If that happens (of which, more later, no doubt), he will claim the victory of an accurate weather forecast (as well as progressing us through the “500 miles to go” barrier).

 

I once heard of some research that concluded the Met Office would be, on average, more accurate if they canned all their expensive models and merely forecasted that tomorrow’s weather will be similar to today’s. This seems to be validated by our own experience. Right now, “we are still trying to keep ahead of the cold front approaching from our stern we are now on a rolly beam reach in a Force 5-6  southerly”. This exactly what was said in yesterday’s blog at 11:00.

 

Onto more exciting matters – the men have now been sorted out from the boys! Terry is now firmly in the “Nancy” camp with full garb:

 

Description: cid:image001.jpg@01D0ADB1.F868D1A0

 

However, the prize goes to the man in the pink socks:

 

Description: cid:image003.jpg@01D0ADB3.AE8F4300

 

 

Peter shows how flip-flops provide a summery offset to foul weather gear

 

Description: cid:image005.jpg@01D0ADB2.DA62B3F0

 

 

But the real man needs no footwear at all:

 

 

Description: cid:image008.jpg@01D0ADB3.AE8F4300

 

 

Finally, the water temperature is now down to 12o. At this rate of decline, we will shortly be able to save power by turning the fridge and freezer off.

 

1 He may actually have said “back” (which is the precise opposite of “veer”) even though he meant “veer” but it doesn’t really matter as none of us knows clockwise from anti-clockwise anyway.

2 Said whilst waving his arm in a random fashion.