navtex weather reports for gulf de lion

cimo

cimo

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hi
anyone in the west med currently picking up weather forecasts/warnings on Navtex. I'm interested in gulf du lion & balerics areas.
what stations/message types have you programmed? (international & local).

My googled information does not appear to concur with reality!

thanks in advance
rgds
c
 
i use passageweather.com whilst on land.

I think you can often expect to record higher wind speeds than forecast for Golfe de Lion - the underlying wind is (say) twenty knots but the air is often moving over land initially (Tramontana comes NE from biscay) so sometimes a bit lower than twenty knots and sometimes gusts a good bit higher. Recently a forecast thirty knots showed instantaneous gusts up to 46knots frinstance.

Perhaps also it's that squeeze between med high pressure and atlantic low so not easy to exactly predict?

Another good scheme is to watch the daily forecasts a good bit in advance to see if the forecast for (say) next Monday is "getting worse" or "getting better" cos thos models are purely computer generated.

Recntly the forecast for early next week 5th - 7th July was gonna be sort of 5-10 knots but last couple of days it's saying more like 15-20knots. Hm. So i reckon we likely in for another moderate kicking and a good idea would be to safely nailed to something solid by late sunday, or actually hanging slightly bows to wind and being blown off a pontoon if anything so i don't burst a load of fenders and have to get out some solid lifejackets and jam them in like last time...
 
yep Carmel2 - got Cabo la Naõ (X) & la Garde (W) programmed.
getting loads of navigational transmissions - so my navtex is working - but not a single weather transmission over 48hours on either 518 or 490. do you happen to know the alloted transmission times for x & w?

hello tcm - i've added passageweather.com now to my bookmarks - in addition to BBC weather & windguru when near the ol' tinternet cafe.
I find the cigar shaped clouds to the North reliable but - but only serve as a confirmation that things are getting bad - i.e. any minute now! stratedgy so far has been to keep well offshore avoiding the gusts somewhat. I don't have an ammeter onboard - so can't say what i'm seeing really. On the brighter side, one of the "positives" of the northley Tramontana is that I'm never on a lee shore round here!
cheers.

cimo
 
cimo said:
yep Carmel2 - got Cabo la Naõ (X) & la Garde (W) programmed.
getting loads of navigational transmissions - so my navtex is working - but not a single weather transmission over 48hours on either 518 or 490. do you happen to know the alloted transmission times for x & w?cheers.
cimo
Click to expand...

They may well have been on strike! The weather transmissions we get from la Garde are sent at 09h00 and 21h00, but we tend to get them a few hours later and generally see the nighttime one in the morning, and the morning one arrives some time around lunchtime - we did get the 09h00 today.
 
Carmel2 said:
They may well have been on strike! The weather transmissions we get from la Garde are sent at 09h00 and 21h00, but we tend to get them a few hours later and generally see the nighttime one in the morning, and the morning one arrives some time around lunchtime - we did get the 09h00 today.
Click to expand...

thanks. c'est merde, no?
 
Weather forecasting

I have always used http://www.grib.us/ in addition to navtex etc. It's free to download and use, customiseable(?) for anywhere in the world and so far the information has been reasonably accurate. It's also helpful to check off each of the forecasts against the other to see if they agree.

Would concur with the view that GdL weather can be a bit freaky at times so always err on the side of caution a bit.

Good luck and happy cruising!

Cgas
 
thanks chasroberts.
checking it out at the moment. I've always been against a laptop onboard, but find myself begining to compromise yet again. 6 month cruise starts next April, enshallah. using the time inbetween to iron out the "problems".
rgds
 
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