Crossing a Biscay bay next week ...

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Miles Better

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I am looking for a weather advice on crossing a Biscay bay from Ireland to Galicia next week on Saturday 24th.
The plan is to start on Saturday 24th evening … motor for the first 24h & than after that catch the Westerly wind …
There is some depression coming from the west but on Sunday 25th we should be 100 miles South driven by Westerly.
Any advice please ?

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Did that same route from Cork years ago. It’s outside the shelf so seas are calmer and looks like you won’t get too much weather. If those westerlys kick in you should get a nice crossing. Watch out for the fishing fleet near the shelf as you get close to Spain looking for tuna - and the Orcas doing the same.
 
Octopus aside. The advice I would give would depend on your yacht, equipment, experience and your crew. Not knowing these factors and with the risk of saying things you already know:

1) Be prepared to delay. Do not commit yourself to the day/date unless the weather is good enough for you.
2) Sail to the weakest crew member's ability.
3) If possible have a way to get up to date weather info so you can avoid any emerging new lows.
4) Have rigorous safety standards. Clip on at night, above F5, reef sooner - all those good things.
5) Have an EPIRB.
 
Latest ECMWF shows Sunday to be better start day. Saturday winds S of Ireland forecast as SSW 5. Latest GFS has lighter winds on Saturday but S - SE and a later start on Sunday.

I use Saildocs. Query @saildocs.com. I prefer other, clearer viewers and I like to be able to save the forecast for viewing offline, later.

To use, Send email -

send ecmwf:52n,40n,00w,15w|0.5,0.5|0,6..240|wind.

Open with PocketGrib, WeatherTrack on IOS, SailGrib on Android, XyGrib on laptop.
Change area to meet your needs. Change spacing to 0.25 if you wish, but no great point as output is smoothed for ECMWF effective resolution to be about 0.5 degree. Time interval could be 3 instead of 6. This is for 10 days. Anything longer is not very useful for serious planning.

To get GFS, replace ECMWF by GFS. Saildocs is a free service and reliable. Most GRIB services are rathe black box in nature.
 
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Passage weather presents good weather for you voyage…No gales,just go!
Wansworth said:
Passage weather presents good weather for you voyage…No gales,just go!
Click to expand...
I always use Windy.com but I will compare it with Passage Weather & learn something new ;)
kof said:
Did that same route from Cork years ago. It’s outside the shelf so seas are calmer and looks like you won’t get too much weather. If those westerlys kick in you should get a nice crossing. Watch out for the fishing fleet near the shelf as you get close to Spain looking for tuna - and the Orcas doing the same.
Click to expand...
We start from Cork ;)
Obi said:
Octopus aside. The advice I would give would depend on your yacht, equipment, experience and your crew. Not knowing these factors and with the risk of saying things you already know:

1) Be prepared to delay. Do not commit yourself to the day/date unless the weather is good enough for you.
2) Sail to the weakest crew member's ability.
3) If possible have a way to get up to date weather info so you can avoid any emerging new lows.
4) Have rigorous safety standards. Clip on at night, above F5, reef sooner - all those good things.
5) Have an EPIRB.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the helpful advice.
franksingleton said:
Latest ECMWF shows Sunday to be better start day. Saturday winds S of Ireland forecast as SSW 5. Latest GFS has lighter winds on Saturday but S - SE and a later start on Sunday.

I use Saildocs. Query @saildocs.com. I prefer other, clearer viewers and I like to be able to save the forecast for viewing offline, later.

To use, Send email -

send ecmwf:52n,40n,00w,15w|0.5,0.5|0,6..240|wind.

Open with PocketGrib, WeatherTrack on IOS, SailGrib on Android, XyGrib on laptop.
Change area to meet your needs. Change spacing to 0.25 if you wish, but no great point as output is smoothed for ECMWF effective resolution to be about 0.5 degree. Time interval could be 3 instead of 6. This is for 10 days. Anything longer is not very useful for serious planning.

To get GFS, replace ECMWF by GFS. Saildocs is a free service and reliable. Most GRIB services are rathe black box in nature.
Click to expand...
Yes at the moment Sunday looks like a better start. I will check Saildocs, Thank you
 
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I must come back to my usual comment about the various posts above.

Several posters are confusing the third party supplier of forecasts with the source. The most used source is the US NOAA GFS. There have long been other sources. The Canadian weather service and the US Navy are two. Recently, it has been possible to get the German (DWD) ICON and the ECMWF.

There have long been several third parties providing the information. The only differences between these is the presentation. The Passageweather global model is the GFS. It can be no better than the GFS provided by XCWeather, Windy, Ventusky, PocketGrib, SailGrib, Saildocs, XyGrib etc.

I like Saildocs because I can view on several viewers and because it is saved automatically. I sometimes use PocketGrib because it is easy to use, it is a clear display and saved automatically. , XyGrib is a little more tachy but gives a good clear display and is saved.

I like Ventusky for its clear display and range of models. Fine for a quick l00k but I prefer my first three. I do not like the Windy display but do like it for the quick comparison between models.
Added later - these are only saved using screenshots.

Whether the GFS is as good as ECMWF is a matter of what you are doing. ECMWF should be better for the longer period, the M stands for Medium-range, say 5 - 10 days. GFS and ICON are more useful, in my opinion, for shorter periods because they are updated 6 - hourly and earlier than ECMWF with its 12 hour update. GFS and ICON are more likely to pick up new data that suggest a change in the forecast. On the other hand, models have improved greatly in recent years. Significant changes in short term prediction are fairly rare. Errors in the first 24 hours are likely to be of small, unpredictable features.

Finally, if forecasts differ significantly, believe none. It really only tells you that there is greater uncertainty than normal.
 
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franksingleton said:
Finally, if forecasts differ significantly, believe none. It really only tells you that there is greater uncertainty than normal.
Click to expand...
A few weeks back the Met Deep Dive showed three models' predictions for the system tracking on from the North Sea; NE England to the south coast! He kept repeating that it was highly unusual to have so much uncertainty at so short (48 hours?) notice.
 
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