Planned an offshore overnight from St Augustine to Ft Pierce. A 34 hour trip. A week prior I began checking weather. NOAA and Passage Weather were in agreement, westerly winds 10 to 15 occassionaly 15 to 20. Seas 3 to 6. Near perfect conditions. As a thought I looked at Windytv forecast. They were forecasting winds in the mid 40 range. Since that was so far off of everyone else I disregarded their forecast totally. Two hours after clearing the inlet winds piped up to 35kts and eventually to 45 kts. Max gust recorded by the anemometer was 50.4 kts. We remained in those conditions for 30 hrs. Needless to say it was quite a ride. I will be paying a lot more attention to windytv.com from now on. And BTW don't let anyone tell you that Hunters can't handle bad weather off shore. The boat a 37.5 did just fine.
A word about windytv
- Thread starter rjarrell
- Start date
From my experience, checking weekend wind forecast for over a decade now, I have come to the conclusion that anything predicted before Wednesday is unreliable. If Fridays forecast is similar to what I saw on Wednesday, I'll have some confidence that it will hold over the weekend. However, even the Saturday morning forecast has been drastically different then the conditions I found once out on the lake. (Just ask the wify)
This is one of the very BEST comments I have seen in a long time.
We brought our boat up to Vancouver Island from SF last summer. We had to hole up in Fort Bragg for a week. Anything over 3 days out was just a guess.
New to the area here, I have been monitoring both US and Canadian weather and wind states all bloody winter to learn the patterns.
Guess what?
Anything over 3 days out was just a guess.
In 35 years of sailing, I also suggest that folks look out their windows and not just rely on the internet weather stuff. Wouldn't hurt for the TV weather reporters to do the same!
Stu,
Our southern neighbours wouldn't get the joke unless they watch CBC, but we call it the "Rick Mercer forecast",
"Environment Canada - cloudy with a chance of making stuff up"
Our southern neighbours wouldn't get the joke unless they watch CBC, but we call it the "Rick Mercer forecast",
I applaud your Windyty contribution to this forum. We occasionally experience confused winds on Cayuga Lake and I have relied on this Free App, since installation, to forecast at least a couple days in advance what the wind will do. I find it extremely well modeled for our area.
https://www.windy.com/42.467/-76.516?42.003,-76.516,8
Thanks...
Cool feedback, I like this windy.com one to try and use. I've been using this for our lake:
https://www.windfinder.com/forecast/guntersville_warrenton-subdivision
https://www.windfinder.com/forecast/guntersville_warrenton-subdivision
For any non-cyclonic weather I've found Passage Weather to be as good as any, and better than most. However they also max out at about 3 days w/good accuracy, decreasing from there. Everyone down here says, " they're always 5 knots low in their predictions." but those everyones forget to add the forward speed of the boat to the wind speed down here, so there's your 5 knots, plus or minus.
Last trip from Newport to Bermuda the three day forecast was plenty on the 650 trip. Even though it was hurricane season, there certainly weren't any storms that could threaten the voyage and my plan was to keep her above six knots w/engine if necessary, anyway. Trip went according to plan, for us.
Can't say the same for a friend on an identical boat that left within an hour of us from southern Mass. His plan was to use a weather router and sail by that. His dilly dallying caused him to arrive 40 hours after us with a considerable amount of damage, having been pounded by a southerly in which some arriving in St George's said had 50 foot waves.
So three days accurate forecast on a 5 day trip is OK, but a three day accurate forecast on a 5.5 day voyage (turned to 7), maybe not so much? lol
Last trip from Newport to Bermuda the three day forecast was plenty on the 650 trip. Even though it was hurricane season, there certainly weren't any storms that could threaten the voyage and my plan was to keep her above six knots w/engine if necessary, anyway. Trip went according to plan, for us.
Can't say the same for a friend on an identical boat that left within an hour of us from southern Mass. His plan was to use a weather router and sail by that. His dilly dallying caused him to arrive 40 hours after us with a considerable amount of damage, having been pounded by a southerly in which some arriving in St George's said had 50 foot waves.
So three days accurate forecast on a 5 day trip is OK, but a three day accurate forecast on a 5.5 day voyage (turned to 7), maybe not so much? lol
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Did you look at both the GFS and the NAM on Passageweather? I think NOAA is GFS and the default on Passageweather is also GFS. You might have been looking at NAM on windytv?
Sailflow gives about 8 models to get confused by! I've started comparing the upper level model on sailflow to the surface models to see if they agree, having some luck there.