what does this mean to you?

[ColinR]

received on navtex in Biscay on way to NW Spain: 'NO NEAR GALE EXPECTED OFF SPAIN' Well my first thought was, great, no near gale. Then I thought maybe it means northerly near gale expected. What do you think? What I actually got was an easterly 7 to 8, a lot better than a northerly which would have put me on a lee shore.

Colin

 

[multihullsailor6]

I would venture to say this was a typo and meant to say "NE" which is nearly what you then got. But it does put the brain's thinking part working in overdrive!

Roger

 

[jason -and the arguenauts]

"near gale " is force 6 or 7 I believe.

 

[smartcom]

There are standard abbreviations to be used for Met forecasts on Navtex - see http://www.pcnavtex.com/AboutNAVTEX/NAVTEXAbbreviations/tabid/232/Default.aspx for a list. This is to minimise the risk of a message over running in length, and so interfering with the time slot of the next transmitter for those vessels that are in range of both transmitters. It looks as though this is what the message was trying to avoid, except he used No instead of N.

 

[david36]

Although 518 NAVTEX messages are supposed to be in English it is fair to say that quite often the transmissions off Spain and Portugal are somewhat approximate English with a few random items included by accident. It helps to check the 490 Spanish/ Portuguese language versions for the same areas as although it is not always possible to understand every item you can pick out wind directions speed etc without much difficulty.
Fair winds.