Forecast Schmorcast

I wrote this last year after our delivery from New York City to Tortola. It was a wet, windy, bumpy, wild 9 day ride. As we slid off of wave after wave, shaking in our constantly sea salt soaked boots, I constructed the following text in my sleep deprived brain.
So, as we prepare for our departure next week, which we now hear will be following an offshore gale, I hope that our weather routers treat us well. Or at least err on the positive (read: dry) side of the forecast.

Guessing the forecast

I thought that using a weather routing service was being prudent. I can download all the NOAA faxes that I want, but I don’t have the comparable knowledge and equipment that a professional does. Funny how I can shift the responsibility from myself onto a service and actually feel good about it. But after four days at sea, almost half of the 1500 miles from New York City to the BVI, my naïve trust about the infallibility of “the professionals” began to wane proportionally to the growing wave height and rising wind. I know, I know, “forecast” is basically a synonym for “educated guess,” key word being “guess,” and a prudent mariner should never depend solely on a forecast. Just stick your head out of the companionway, and there’s your weather, I hear you old salts saying. Well, now I can’t without getting an eyeful of the green water that’s shooting over the bow in the 12’ foot breaking waves because I listened to the professionals tell me a few days ago that this would be a good time for the passage south. Granted, this time I was never really in danger, I know that. But I expected that with all their fancy equipment, they could tell me more than what I gathered from my extrapolations of the NOAA weather faxes swirling their wind and wave arrows on my computer. On that day four, we looked at the weather faxes before calling the professionals, hoping they would tell us our assumptions about the coming days would be wrong. “Force 6?” they would guffaw, “Not going to see it. Those NOAA people don’t know what they’re talking about! 15’ waves nine seconds apart tossing your 64’ boat around like a rag doll? Ha! Start chopping those veggies now and pull out the recipe for a Baked Alaska, it will be smooth sailing for the next four days after you hang up the phone with me, the Professional!” And then the screeching halyards and a drenching spray of saltwater into the cockpit startled me from my daydream. When we called our routers, they said to batten down the hatches (no use- they were already leaking) and get ready for heavy weather. What happened to our coveted weather window? And where’s that granola bar, I mean, dinner?

I guess I have to be happy about the fact that we didn’t buddy boat. Then the stuff really would’ve hit the fan and we probably wouldn’t have even checked in with the routers. Cruisers are funny like that, and yes, I do consider myself a cruiser. Luckily we learned our lesson early about the lemming tendencies of “buddy boating.” It usually goes something like this. You and the other boat(s) crew listen to the weather or download data from NOAA for about a week and talk about the best day to head out as you sip your Pacifico, the little lime at the bottom of the bottle clunking around every time you make an exclamatory point. The beginning day of the burgeoning and elusive “weather window” that you have all settled on looms closer and everyone is still downloading and listening, but somehow discussing it over margaritas on the nights leading up to departure seems to make it seem more favorable than it really may be. “30 knots on the nose? My boat loves 30 knots! Now we’ll really get to test out those weeping chain-plates!” (High five across the table, upsetting the basket of chips). Or somehow talk about the system off to the east mysteriously ceases as the expectations for an on-time departure grows. Plans are made to meet so and so at such and such marina on specific dates and even actual hours, dinghies are hauled out of the water, fresh provisions and ice packed away, and sails hanked on to the forestay. No turning back now, even with ominously dark clouds marching across the horizon (oh, that, it’s just a squall. A little fresh water on the decks ain’t a bad thing, right? Besides, our ice is going to melt if we don’t leave this minute!) So off you and your buddy boat(s) go, under way at last and with a safety net. I mean, seriously, what can really go wrong if you have one or two other sailboats under 40 feet a few miles away? You talk on VHF, telling each other about the nasty lightening storms showing up on the radar and what do you know, on the other side of the dodger, but soon you have to switch to a predetermined frequency on the SSB at intervals of 6 hours to check in as the distance between the various boats inevitably increases over the days. But somehow you still feel safe as long as that voice is on the radio or a running light on the horizon is visible, even when the moon is blotted out by cumulonimbus or the driving rain momentarily disrupts your view of the building seas. If you had gone off “dangerously” by yourself, most likely you would have paid more attention to the weather faxes and reports and waited for the real, or at least more favorable, window a few days later. But as I well know, sometimes peer pressure gets the best of you.

So what’s the moral of the story for you and me? Do the homework. Always. Even if the guy on the 54’ Hinckley proclaims to be the master of weather prediction, take it upon yourself to do the best you can, and when that doesn’t quite get you into your comfort zone, well, I guess, call the “Professionals.” But don’t forget that stash of granola bars when the Baked Alaska doesn’t quite work out.