Weather lore

zoidberg

zoidberg

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1. Normal people: checks weather once
2. New sailors: checks weather 3 times a day
3. Experienced sailors: checks 5 different weather apps
4. Old salts: Licks finger, holds it up, knows exactly what's coming
40 years of sailing = human barometer
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Technology is great but my knee knows a low pressure system before any app does
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I s'pose that depends on which finger....

:LOL:
 
“Human barometer”. This is the Barometer on our boat last Thursday. By the time the pressure dropped we knew there was a storm because it was stormy outside. Utterly useless. I can imagine when it’s all that was available it was good enough but give me a weather app any day! I would never check once a day though, weather models often have a morning and afternoon mode as they don’t seem to deal with night time very well so we check at least twice a day.
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I thought the forum consensus was that sailors with paper charts and a 1979s British built boat long keelers with no electronics didn’t need to check the weather. Surely they just keep sailing on through while us AWB drivers quiver in port looking at forecasts of F3+?
 
Proper sailors could construct a synoptic chart from the shipping forecast. :)

Or you could pick up a copy of the Daily Telegraph when it was a real newspaper whilst you were in the newsagents getting your cigs.

Or ring the Harbour master.

Or check yer seaweed.
 
franksingleton said:
Sitting on your boat in Plymouth or wherever, does your nee know anything about whether un St Peter Portnow, or anywhere else or what it will be anywhere else in 6 hours.
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Not my 'nee' in #1. This was a quotation from elsewhere posted to initiate perspective and comment.

I do remember clearly, if it helps, jilling along gently on a warm summer's afternoon breeze heading SW'ly-ish somewhere between Plymouth and The Fal. BBC Radio 4 was burbling away soporifically in the background. Someone was intoning about 'England batting collapse' when "We interrupt this programme with an urgent weather warning from the Met Office. Attention all shipping in Sea Area Plymouth. The following gale warning was issued at 1330hrs today for Sea Area Plymouth. Westerly, Strong Gale, Imminent....."

There was a long moment of disbelief.... then the helm went down and we gybed our 40-foot ( Mike ) Birch ply trimaran away back towards Fowey. We'd just got inside the entrance when the first big gust arrived - and didn't stop for 2 days. Where that came from, Gawd and his little fishes only knows.
 
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zoidberg said:
Not my 'nee' in #1. This was a quotation from elsewhere posted to initiate perspective and comment.

I do remember clearly, if it helps, jilling along gently on a warm summer's afternoon breeze heading SW'ly-ish somewhere between Plymouth and The Fal. BBC Radio 4 was burbling away, soporifically in the background. Someone was intoning about 'England batting collapse' when "We interrupt this programme with an urgent weather warning from the Met Office. Attention all shipping in Sea Area Plymouth. The following gale warning was issued at 1330hrs today for Sea Area Plymouth. Westerly, Strong Gale, Imminent....."

There was a long moment of disbelief.... then the helm went down and we gybed our 40-foot ( Mike ) Birch ply trimaran away back towards Fowey. We'd just got inside the entrance when the first big gust arrived - and didn't stop for 2 days. Where that came from, Gawd and his little fishes only knows.
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Apologies to your knee. I hope it was not too offended. With my AMD, I tend to mistype and misread.

Many of us have such apochryphal stories. To me, the most marked improvement has been the ability to predict further ahead, often with some confidence. In 1967 at the start of my 10 Yeats in the hot seat, we were only allowed to give a 24 hour forecast and a 2 day out loo with the option of a one day outlook. Before leaving the job 10 years later. I was arguing to be allowed to extend the outlook peril by 2 days.

I would never discount, totally, such a sudden change in a forecast although the chances of a government about turn seem some what grater. AAMOI, when was your example.
 
'Apocryphal stories.....' :LOL:

That's shurely a part - and a cherished part - of what we do? And I do enjoy, from time to time, the gently-inflected banter with which you ply me..... :cool:

The little interruption to the cricket commentary ( above ) was, as many will understand, both a blessed relief and a very timely intervention. Far from any inference that the swift interjection was in any way a failure of process, I and my lady were grateful indeed for the Just In Time delivery of a VIP 'heads up'.

As for when, per your query, I appreciate your interest in 'backcasting' but it was certainly more than 30 years ago, when I had more of my faculties than I do today. My guesstimation is around 1991/2, but I doubt that will be of help.

If there's a lesson, a 'takeaway', then it might be that one should heed ALL sources of information affecting one's comfort and safety on the sea, and not depend simplistically on just the one - the 'preferred' one. This 'bear of little brain' was even willing to endure Radio 4's interminably-drear cricket commentary....
 
As a meteorologist and a sailor of dinghies (mainly Fireflies,many, many yearsago) and yachts, I am one of a fairly small number of people who can truly see and have experienced both sides. In your test match, I am glad you found relief. I think I would have used the off button but it may have been before the days of VHF when we were dependent on 200 kHz. I was just interested to know whether this was a few or many years ago.

In 2016, on passage Lezardrieux to StPeter Port, we were caught in a F9/10 betweenRoches Douvres and Guernsey having expected F5 and, at worst, F6. It seems to have been very localised. I was never able to get any more information. We and another vessel called St Peter Port CG and asked them to monitor our progress on AIS. Jersey Met had had a “Perhaps F6 later” in the forecast/ Uk and MeteoFrance had F5 max. The unexpected can still happen with small scale systems although I would have been surprised if your long lived in storm had been recently.

Good to see that we can all create typos. In my case, more than most.
 
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Seven old fishermen
Sit on the sea wall in the sun.
A storm, a week away,
Frets their blood.
They smoke pipes. They reckon
A few baskets of cod between now
And the purple chasms westward.

I sit on my rocker
Watching 'the fronts' on a glimmering screen.

George Mackay Brown
 
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