THEY MUST THINK WE HAVE MONEY TO BURN.

[steve_cronin]

£99 for four months forecasting! Plus the cost of an onboard laptop.

Did you get your "ybm.com" newsletter?

Hi-Fi buffs are said to have more interest in the equipment than the music, do IPC think we are more interested in "Toys" than sailing?

Stop these absurd advertisements NOW please.


Here it is:-



Advertisement

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The perfect Christmas present for just £99/€150 for the 2003 sailing season!
*based on four concurrent** months of your choice in 2003.

** How do months get to be concurrent? Consecutive surely?

Steve Cronin

 

[charles_reed]

Steve,
I'm always impressed by your passion but sometimes fear for you being struck down by a coronary.

If you have a laptop, internet access and a modicum of knowledge you have access to exactly the same information as these people, with a major advantage that you can allow for differntail developments.

I use the NOOA site (which gives access thro' Tallahassee to all the ODAS buoy reports) as well as computer simulations of sea-level and 500 mb charts fro the N Atlantic.
If you want something more popularised one can have a look at AWS Sembach again the American model) or you have Meteo France @ Toulouse and the European Centre for Long range forecasting using the European model.
All the above give far more accurate and up-to-date information than out own tired Met Office who are constantly trying to charge us for something we've already paid for.
Before anybody mentions karlsruhe it's just a re-hash of information from the above sites and usually trailing them by some time.
Or if you're really up to date you can download the *.grib files from NOAA into your Maxsea software and have it all done for you (though I think Maxsea have some way to go before they get it accurate).

 

[steve_cronin]

Nothing wrong with MY health Charles.....

but I wish you would read the sense behind the posting before you reply.

If you have £99's to throw around then there are better causes than these people. SAy you use your boat one weekend in three, that's five trips in a sixteen week period for which they want 99 of my hard earned quids! Nearly twenty quid a throw!

I am sure what you say about NOAA is true (& I venture to sugges that I was probably using them before you were)

Your criticisms of the Met Office were also a bit strong (IMO) too. It is all too possible to get so much met info that you'd never want to go to sea at all!

I'll leave my dislike of laptops on board for another day.

Steve Cronin

 

[Guest]

Sounds good

Charles

Could you give us exact details of where to find this info?

Many thanks

Geoff

 

[Jacket]

Re: Nothing wrong with MY health Charles.....

But if you're off on a cruise for a few months in an area where forecasts are harder to come by, its probably not bad value.

A couple of years ago, I must have spent about that much trying to get accurate forecasts in a language I spoke while sailing in Finland and the Baltic states. It also involved a lot of hastle and running around.

 

[Joe_Cole]

OUT OF INTEREST GUYS

I keep seeing references to poor quality forecasts from The Met Office and I'm not sure what the problem is. My sailing, at present, is mainly UK coastal so I can understand it if you are going further afield. For my needs though I've found the Met Office (and subsequently the Coastguard forecasts) to be more than adequate. I've looked at other sites and none of them seem dramatically better than The Met, but I freely admit I may be missing something.

This isn't a wind up. I'm genuinely interested!

Joe

 

[Peppermint]

Forecasts

The met office forecasts have been all over the place for ages.

I know people are listening to forecasts that would scare a lifeboat man, deciding to stay at home, and being royaly pi**ed off when it's turned out nice again.

I suspect that a combination of Michael Fish's hurricane and not enough windows in the met office are to blame.

 

[mtb]

Re: Forecasts

Around my area of coast I use both met office site's , shipping and inshore .
They are quite different at times but between the two and opening my back door I have no probems in knowing the weather . I do only have ten miles to the coast from here so that does help
Cheers
Mick

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/boats
I want a steel ex trawler or tug cheap needing work

 

[steve_cronin]

SO I ASK AGAIN, WOULD YOU PAY £99..

..FOR A FEW WEEKS FORECASTS ON A LAPTOP?

& would you trust a company with a seemingly doubtful mastery of the english language?

Steve Cronin

 

[jimi]

Re: SO I ASK AGAIN, WOULD YOU PAY £99..

1) No I would'nt, I'd spend 20% OF the money on a decent meteorology book and acquire the charts from the web.

2) That would rule out most companies!

 

[colvic]

So right Charles!!

 

[bedouin]

Re: SO I ASK AGAIN, WOULD YOU PAY £99..

Certainly not - they don't seem to offer anything that you can't get for free, only with one provisio.

My mobile access at sea is via a standard mobile - 9600 bps. Many of the good meterology resources on the web are impractical at that sort of speed. OnLineWeather offer a good WAP service, and Meto also have shipping forecasts available; but downloading charts could be an expensive business.

 

[sailbadthesinner]

Re: Forecasts

I think the main problem is timing
they can see the depressions out there in the atlantic or biscay
but they scale its speed across then sometimeds they just slow up and donot appear as predicted and a days sailing is lost or the afternoon to get back to home port. Is this the met's fault. weh had weather charts for the challenge trip. and 3 forecasts. none of them got it all right. eitther time speed or direction wrong.

Wedding can be an anagram of 'JUST HANDOVER THE MONEY' if you can't spell.

 

[steve_cronin]

I think thast\'s pretty fair...

i once had a long conversation with a forecaster in the days when you could talk to a "Duty Forecaster" at SWS or Bracknell. Like he said when the depressions are coming up to the western approaches there is very little prior indication as to whether they will track up the English Channel and fill once they arrive at the top of Germany giving us the usual three day cycle of wind, rain & gradually improving skies until the next arrives or swerve up the coast of Ireland and sit stationary on the north of Scotland for a while and give us a prolonged period of dullness and rain (Very much simplified I know)

It's much easier to predict weather in the USA or Central Europe or Africa where the topography doesn't play such a large part.

Steve Cronin

 

[Peppermint]

Quite recently

a forecaster told me that what he described as "new trends" had occured. He likened it to "wind showers". We'd had a few drinks but what I gather he was getting at was that the effects of weather are becoming more fragmented and thus quite localized. He seemed to think that forecasting had got harder in the last few years.

 

[Guest]

Re: OUT OF INTEREST GUYS

Hi,

Can't say that I have been that impressed with the Met Office. I could understand them getting the wind force out a touch or being a bit out on timing of a system passing through but they have been dead wrong a lot recently.

BTW - who have you got in that wee boat of yours? It seems to be doing a lot of bobbing up and down and not going anywhere!

Regards



Fred

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.