Sailing weather prediction

Sailing weather prediction

Sailing weather prediction - art of weather forecasting and routing for adventurers and competitive sailors.

Weather forecasting for sailing involves several activities such as weather training and coaching, dissimination of data for use in navigation and route planning software, race modeling which involves historical weather and sea state analysis for yacht and sail design, trip and adventure planning for distance races and record attempts, monitoring for departure and trip weather windows. It involves several type of events such as day races, long-distance races, around-the-world-races, and record attempts. It is routinely used in races such as Volvo Ocean Race, America's Cup campaigns, and olympic classes regattas.

Long-distance races

Weather forecasting for long distance races is based on dissimination meteorological data, most often in GRIB format, for use in navigation and route planning software and yacht characteristics (polars), providing guidance, as well as analysis of historical weather and sea state data.

GRIB

GRIB (GRIdded Binary) is a concise data format commonly used in meteorology to dissiminate forecast weather data. For sailing purposes the GRIBs are transmitted and received at sea. These GRIBs contain only small subset of surface data, usually winds (direction and wind speed), information about wave strength (proportional to significant wave height) and direction, surface pressure. The data is further reduced by providing its subset around the position of a yacht. The data is transmitted over satellite phones and single side band radios.

oftware for optimal weather routing

Modern sailing weather forecasting involves transmission of weather forecasts which are used in on-board software which simulates optimal (and safest) routing in distance races. The data is often transmitted in form of GRIB files or similar which are customized for specific areas. These files are suitable for use in popular routing and tactical racing software such as MaxSea, Deckman for Windows, Raytech Navigator/Sail Racer, Expedition or Sailplanner.

Olympic sailing

Weather forecasting for olympic class sailing is a form of nowcasting predicting weather and currents in approximately 0-6 hours timeframe. Even though understanding of synoptic weather conditions is of importance but mesoscale and local scale events take precedence. The forecast includes predictions of the sea-breeze onset, turbulent winds shifts, coastal jets, changes in tidal currents, fog, as well as wind acceleration and directional changes associated with clouds.

Bibliography

*David Houghton and Fiona Campbell, Wind Strategy, 2005, ISBN 978-1-904475-12-5


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