According to the Times this morning, now that the Met Office have got the latest Okey-Kokey 2000 turbo-nutter-bastard computers recently installed, the weather from now on is going to be dead right. Every day.
So those of us in Poole Bay yesterday afternoon in the W F5/6 (we had sustained 22-24kts true windspeed) were hallucinating, it was just the predicted W or SW 2-3, and the hailstones were a complete figment of our imagination! Good job they weren't forecasting strong winds.
<hr width=100% size=1><font size=1>Sermons from my pulpit are with tongue firmly in cheek and come with no warranty!</font size=1>
Well I hope that WG is right, the European weather centre are predicting a real hooley, not dissimilar to the one predicted for Wednesday. Still it's 5 days off, plenty of time for a change or two methinks.
Ah, that would explain why it was so wet upstairs coming back from Cowes last night, then. I wondered why we were the only thing on the water apart from the Yarmouth and Southampton ferries...
<hr width=100% size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://homepage.ntlworld.com/graham.wignall/boats/eulimene600x800.jpg>The old and the new</A>
Ah 'last night', but then after about 1830 you would at least have had a flatter sea with wind and tide together, at 1400 it was a touch stirred up over Christchurch Ledge and SWMBO was asking if we shouldn't put the sprayhood up which confirmed the F6 bit on the instruments, at F5 the spray doesn't usually reach the cockpit! Still 7.2kts on port tack and 6.8kts on starboard (more into the waves) can't be bad, 'bout the same as 30kts on a mobo..
<hr width=100% size=1><font size=1>Sermons from my pulpit are with tongue firmly in cheek and come with no warranty!</font size=1>