West Country in September

[brians]

Is September a good month to cruise the West Country leaving from Solent?

I had planned to go in May but events have conspired ...............

 

[sarabande]

Met Office says we are not getting rain till October. In reality you can have wonderful days but shorter nights mean quicker sprints between moorings if you don't like night passages.


Generally some more fog around. Majority of harbours will be less busy with summer visitors.

 

[zoidberg]

" Only fools and Fishermen go West of the Lizard come September".... That advice is about 200 years older than Mark Fishwick..

Equinoctial gales come hard and sudden. You need your wits about you, and 'where you gonna run to'. But, ask 'fisherman' on here.

 

[sarabande]

It would be useful plot the number of gales in September for, say, Lizard, over the last 200 years and see if there are any changes in frequency.

Any of your Met Office contacts feel like interrogating the Cray ? It could find the answer in milliseconds.

I suspect that many established folkloric weather sayings are less valid than they were.

 

[NPMR]

Our Autumn cruise starts from here, of course!, and we have a jolly time, all over.

Sure, it'll blow and rain a bit more than this summer but overall, you'll be unlucky to get nothing but poor weather. Usually it's warm; the sea will be, for swimming.

And you'll find it wonderfully peaceful and uncrowded. Enjoy.

 

[[70521]]

Is September a good month to cruise the West Country leaving from Solent?

I had planned to go in May but events have conspired ...............

Depends on the weather.

August last year was "pants" to quote my daughter so far it has been pretty good.

 

[zoidberg]

I suspect that many established folkloric weather sayings are less valid than they were.

'Past performance is no guide to the future' is often trotted out, but it should be remembered that after a researcher at the Met Office published a learned article on what he called 'The Crossed Winds Rule', experienced members of the Nautical Institute pointed out that sailing ship masters out of the German/Dutch seaports had known of and used exactly that knowledge for centuries to determine whether to set course northabout, or southabout, the British Isles when heading out into the Atlantic. There are other 'rules of thumb' which are useful aids to decision making.

There are multiple examples of severe gales affecting the Channel and Western Approaches in late summer/autumn, but arguably the most memorable was what became known as the Fastnet Race Storm - which happened in the Celtic Sea, in mid-August.

That we have had a mild-wind summer - weeks of quiet seas and breeze - does not guarantee things will stay that way. Rather, it is guaranteed that things will change. 'When' is the hard question....

 

[Seajet]

Allow for being gale-bound for days in harbour, with good bits inbetween gales; and don't be too adventurous or go too far.

 

[Scillypete]

THERE BE DRAGONS BEYOND THE LIZARD! ! !

and by September they are hungry

Believe what you like, sometimes it'll be good sometimes not so good, but long range forecasts are much more reliable than before. So if it looks ok go for it but keep up to date with the latest forecasts.

September is usually when I can best fit in a trip somewhere, normally to France, Brest area, but one year to Cherbourg. It is not always bad but the longer nights don't help.

 

[jdc]

I have often been to Scilly in September, and in fact I reckon - only an impression - that it's often more settled than August. So, because I have a mania for being quantitative, I have just looked at the historical record, see here:


And it indeed shows that the upper 20-percentile wind strength at St Mary's is lower in September than in August, and considerably lower than in May. I'm sure it's a similar picture all over the SW of England.