weather info Biscay

[jsmilde]

I'm planning to sail from Scheveningen to the north of Spain or there about end of coming August.
Now my question is: where can I get the best weather info for crossing the bay of Biscay, both before departure and while at sea.
Especially a good five-day forecast for the Biscay area (route Plymouth-Cape Finnistere) while at sea would be very helpful, because somewhere near the Channel Islands we'll have to decide whether to do the trip non-stop or stop at Plymouth or Falmouth to wait for favourable weather before attempting the crossing.
I understand meteo France has good forecasts, but do they also have good five day forecasts for the route Plymouth-La Coruna?
And is it possible to get good five-day forecasts on the internet. I've spent quite a bit of time searching, but I can't really seem to find the info I need.

Thanks,

jsmilde

 

[ccscott49]

Weatheronline.co.uk is the best weather site on the internet I've found so far, you can also look at wetterzentrale.de, very good site aswell, try the usaf sembach part of wetterzentrale, on the charts page.

 

[johna]

The current August issue No 428 of PBO has an article Don't be afraid of the Bay! all info on possible routes and weather information included.

 

[ParaHandy]

They are v. good sites.

Could try http://www.franksingleton.clara.net/ for a comprehensive list of what is available.

 

[Nigelhg]

Raymarine have chartplotting software that u can download wind chart forecasts to. It works with their demo version and is really quite slick. My brother and parents are on their way back from spain in the boat at the moment and they used this for forecasting to pick the right weather window for crossing both going down and going up (they went straight from neyland to santander). You can do animations of forecasts just like u would see on tv and best of all u can have the weather files for virtually and part of the world emailed to u free. The files themselves are very small so u can download them quickly if using gsm or iridium etc.

 

[HenryB]

If you are able to decode RTTY on board then the Hamburg Weather Service issues a 5-6 day forecast for Biscay (46.4N 5.7W) as part of their Med forecast. They also cover the same position and Finisterre (43.5N 9.8W) for the next 2 days as part of their UK to Canaries forecast.

The forecasts give the wind speed and direction and wave height, for each 12 hour period.

I can e-mail you some examples if you are interested.

Regards,