weather forecast

[Peppermint]

Re: It maybe the fault of Mr Beaufort

To be honest I've never quite got this obsession with wind force.

The wind is just part of the sailing conditions. If you've got no feeling for how your boat is handling the sailing conditions then perhaps having a scale and instruments to measure it is useful. It's handy for the log book too, but really it's what you do reletive to the wind you've got and the other conditions that is important.

If a guy comes in from a hard beat and say's he's been in a gale and another guy says it was a stiff breeze, I suspect both are right. It's just perception.

People sail happily in big winds if it's sunny for example.

If you do skippered charters it's a beginers thing. They want to be in a gale. Well until they are they do.

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[penfold]

Another example would be the boat I was on last sunday, running down the needles channel with the tide into a 3-4 SW. It was impressively lumpy by the time we got to the fairway bouy with 6 to 10ft lumps, but definitely not very windy. Or the opposite extreme, I can remember lying ahull to 50 knots of southerly, gusting 55, off Cape Finisterre, and because the tide was also going north the sea was pretty flat; no more than 6-8ft swell and very long and smooth.

cheers,
david

<hr width=100% size=1>OMG, Schrodinger's cat is dead!