KEEPING A WEATHER EYE

I'm keeping a weather eye on Hurricane Danny which looks like it will be breaking bad for a lot of sailors in the Caribbean area the next couple of days. Even though it is far from my local waters at this point. I found out such storms can sneak up on you if your guard is down. A number of years ago my gal and I were vacationing at Montauk on the eastern end of Long Island. We took a ferry over to Block Island and listened to a Park Ranger describe her family's experience during the Hurricane of 1938. We wondered why she was going on about it so much. We soon found out that indeed a Hurricane was heading for our area in the next day or two. Being on vacation we had been in a media blackout. It was the days before smart phones and wifi. We got back on the last ferry to Montauk and hightailed out of our motel room a day early. My girlfriend got on the last Long Island Railroad train heading to New York on the mainline before a tree across the tracks and shut it down. Since that time I now know to keep a weather eye on storms brewing in the Caribbean well in advance of their movements north.

UH OH!

BIANKA is not yet in the water but Tropical Storm ANA has formed off the southeast United States. I'm a little concerned as the storm makes it's way up the coast. But, there are a few good things in my favor:

1) One thing is the boat is still on land.
2) The mast has been unstepped which means less windage and stress on it.
3) The brutal cold winter has meant that the waters around Long Island are colder than normal and so should knock down the storms strength.

All of the above help ease my fears about the storm doing any major damage but, I'll be keeping a weather eye on it.

Nor' easter Season Again

Two days ago I had a delightful sail back to BIANKA'S homeport at the end of a fall cruise to the Oyster Bay Oyster Festival. Today I am tied to a dock as a Nor' easter starts to form just to the south of the Long Island. I actually prefer to ride this weather out on a mooring. But, I am expecting some packages to arrive on shore and wanted to be there to receive them. I have doubled up on the lines and they have stretched enough to make stepping on the dock a little iffy. Another concern is the cleats on the aging dock. Winds are expect to increase even more this afternoon with gusts to 30 knots. Welcome to Nor' Easter season.

JUST THINKING ABOUT THE WEATHER

As Bob Dylan said so well: "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." Lately I became a little more suspect about what I hear from NOAA on the VHF and it's forecasts having been surprised one two many times in my travels. Since they digitized the voice of the forecasters one can never really tell who is making the forecast if anyone. I use to know the trusted forecasters by their voice. Not anymore.  The digital Mr. NOAA aka Perfect Paul sounds the same all the time. Reading the forecasts online does not help much either especially when you read more and more things like "because the computer models diverge forecast is tricky" seems like they are relying more on the computers than knowledge and experience. So I use the NOAA forecast like we used the paper routines/scripts when I worked in live television. Somewhere on the page were these words of warning "This is merely a guide" Meaning things can change. So I have more and more started to become my own weather forecaster. Thanks to the Internet we sailors who can connect to it can now get a lot of the same data the NOAA folks do. I've been using the NOAA site to collect some data but, a fellow named Allen Edwards has put together a really great free weather site at L-36.com for sailors that has all the weather info you could want in just a few clicks. Watch his video demo and  then try it:



One page and you've got the wind speeds, forecasts, weather maps and radar and what I find most important nearby buoy data. Plus you can edit it to your needs too.  Allen has done a great job of compiling all the info a sailor might need at L-36.com  and so he gets a Capt. Mike tip of the hat!