mobo weather forecasting for biscay-gib-Nice

tcm

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Yeah, a boaty post!

I am tranna forcast for a 1-week trundle, bout via gib from so'ton to Nice and wd welcome advice. I obviously want flat sea as far as poss. day by day we are targeting soton-brest-la coruna (top left hand corner of spain) -lisbon - gibraltar - almeria - barcelona - Nice (actually antibes next door)

I wd welcome your 2p-worth in choosing the rigtht time to leave southampton, altho of course it wd be useful to know your info source whether hunch, seaweed-gazing, amateur or pro forecaster, or perhaps you met God in the pub, whatever.

resource-wise i use/have used

windguru.cz
theyr.net
wetterzentrale.de for 9-day GFS or GEM models
meteofrance

Spain - er can't remeber who i used last time, possibly rang up the fuel dock but then i just knew it was okish in biscay.

I am also using simonkeeling of weatheronline.co.uk which er is £1.50-per-minute's-worth, and his advice is that the weather is fab 1 week before i plan to leave when even with pleading i can't speedem up. So target departure date is 10th april or later, perhaps a week or several weeks later. But gotta leave by say 10th May, really.

I can take sub-20knots on the nose and make progress, but of course sea state is key so wd prefer the wind behind us, or non-existent. Don't care about viz or rain - we go through the night, offshore.
 

ccscott49

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I use wetterzentrale, same as you but look at ECMWF, as well, for medium range stuff. You need to look across the atlantic for aways, to see whats on its way, the us weather sites are pretty good, also look at weatheronline, sailing, atlantic routes, this also gives some idea of whats coming. I left later in the year, down the portugese coast the trades are northerly, so up yer chuff, but they wont have set in yet. Look for a high pressure forming over the azores, this will settle weather and push anything mnasty northwards, but again this system may not yet have formed. I'll have a study myself and get back to you. Maybe see you in Barcelona!!
 

NorthernWave

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Doing a similar passage year before last, I saw a US Navy ship so took it on myself to ask them for the weather. 'Seas becoming calm winds reducing to 10-15 knots' actual weather the next day was winds 40-50 knots with seas 20 to 25 feet. A very unpleasant journey.

Don't mean to put you off as it is a fantastic place to cruise, especially liked Gib, that little bit of britain.

Chris
 
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Deleted User YDKXO

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I use Weather Online Europe. Gives weather and wind forecast for upto 6 days for seemingly every town and village in Europe. Not a marine weather site but may help
For a longer term UK only forecast have a look at Weather Outlook. Might give you an idea whether your planned departure date is favourable or not
 

EME

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Succinct Answers

Best time to leave Soton ? - Why go there in first place ?

Best time to arrive Antibes ? - ASAP

Barcelona - Antibes ? - Do not forget to pick me up in Lavandou ( for others please refer Kidnap thread on outward journey )

Spanish Weather ? - Better than Biscay (possibly)

Long Range Weather Forecast Accuracy ? - Contradiction in Terms

Nearly 2,000 posts and possibly my most constructive to date, at least this request for info returns to top of the pile of polls ...
 

mjf

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Matt, what you need is a good high pressure set. So you must watch the whole altantic chart and take your own view.

Then the problem this time of year is fog in the western approaches (incl the bay of biscay). Believe me after a couple of days using radar (because that is all you can see) is a great pain in the nethers. You will prefer a bit of wind and spray and half a chance to see what you might hit!


Or, have you thought of a truck to take D2 ? or even .......a dutch company that 'specialises' in ocean transport of boats to/from the med.


You know it makes sense! It keeps the lawyers in clover
 

tcm

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radar

take your point, although i don't have a problem asking pro forecasters for their more exp interpretation on a particular set of curvy lines.

Yes, it's nice to able able to see out, but irrelevant really: we'll be running at night so altho a bit creepy i don't much care if there's fog or not - it doesn't affect the (complete lack of) viz offshore in complete blackness, highly creepy to start with but ok after a while. The gaze is fixed at radar screens and temperature guages, so we rumble along keeping a lookout ENTIRELY on radar. Of course, the fun starts when it's time to go in and get some fuel, but there tend to be fewer boats around in fog inshore, and offshore there's even less to hit.

Reading this and reading back, i spose I can see the advantage for a small boat planning to go offshore of a See-me (?) thing that amplifies and returns a radar signal. Sepretly I would like to know (and don't) what we look like on other people radar but seeing as how they adjusted , i spose it must be ok...

Issues bout lawyers - all noted. Are you taking that boat of yours x-channel or wot?
 

tcm

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Du Queasy

It *might* be permissible to deviate into du Queasy to top our supplies of er copies of the News of the World, or a Chinese take-away food.

Send me yr mobile again cos i had a phone-in-water incident and lost some numbers...
 

mjf

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Re: radar

Yes , but at night if the vis is half decent or there is a bit of moon you can see loads, nav lights show a long way in pitch black.

But I agree if you use the instruments 24/7 frankly you will be aware of what to do and whats coming at you.

I too would love to see what sort of target I show on the radar of a ship with a scanner 150ft up in F4 at say 3 miles off.
 

tcm

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Re: radar or eyes?

urm, well i see your point.

But you see em on radar long before their navlights are visible though, and actually seeing them is nice, hello moon hello stars - as far as seeing other ships/boats is concerned it's way too late and could be much much too close for er ooh gosh, look, another boat...

Sepretly although it's nice to have a looksee, it's not realistic to stay out in the open all night at 20+knots early season cos it's flippin freezin much better inside behind a screen in the warm. So posting a lookout outside is a bit useless except if they are acting as spotter for flotsam inshorem for 20-30 mins max, unless you really want them to die of exposure

After about six hours running the whole of the exterior of a planing boat is covered in salt spray, bit more or less depending on wind. Lots of boats can be seen in the med attempting to clean the inside of the boat cos they have left the patio/stern access doors open for a "bit of air" on a long delivery run and the back-eddies around the superstructure have pulled in fine spray and diesel, unnoticeable at the time, but which over a long long run turns the light upholstery grey and rusts all the non-marine metalwork.

For all thesse reasons, the radr shoud be on at every single trip so that the pilot/skipper has utter confidence offshore the radar can see all that he can see, and often a lot earlier - i can generally pickup a high coastline like cherbourg 30miles off and a ship about 12miles off - much sooner than eyes can do the same with navklights what is it about 5miles? for white lights and 2miles? for green/red.

And for the same reasons, we have to plan around being indoors, with doors shut.

The ONLY exception to this is in the solent, the freakiest scariest bit of our entire trip up from gib where there's loads of buoys, fishyboats, and ferries all over the shop and Mk1 eyeball in moonlight much more easily identifies what's what.
 
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