Saturday, June 25, 2011

Round the Island final weather update

Having carried out the weather briefing at the Island Sailing club, on behalf of Raymarine, I thought I had best do one final update of the expected conditions for the Round the Island race.

Currently we are experiencing some reasonable slight to moderate rain and drizzle , this will quickly clear leaving initially poor visibility conditions that will steadily improve
Cloud cover is expected to break from 0900-1000 and become fairly clear by midday. With this we should see an increase in wind speeds as a thermal enhancement develops, peaking at 24-27 KT in the gusts.
Overall the directional trends are limited which puts more emphasis on the tidal aspect off the race

Have fun and see you all soon


Thursday, June 9, 2011

Sail for Gold Launch time

Having a little breather post forecast as we watch the sailors launch on the fourth day of the regatta.

Slightly lighter breeze so looks like a full days racing with a W going SW 10-15 KT looking like it will build late afternoon.
Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.9

Thursday, June 2, 2011

June- a busy month and hopefully the start of Summer

June seems to be the start of what is often called the 'silly season' in terms of events and the rapidly approaching summer

For me as part of Weatherwhiz it is definitely getting busy as I keep and eagle eye on the weather for the forthcoming festivals and I am focus is turned towards two fairly big events in my calender for the year, the Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta happening at the Olympic venue in Weymouth and Portland this week and the JP Morgan Asset Management Round the Island Race which is in its 80th Year.
Two very different in events in fairly quick succession but this is why I love my work.

To go from working with some of the elite sailing athletes in the Olympic world (some of whom who will no doubt be partaking in the Round the Island) looking at very small gain features over short periods of time to pitching to 1000s of sailors who skill, knowledge aims all vary in a race that can last in excess of 12 hours is quite challenging

While Skandia Sail for Gold looks set for changeable conditions with initially easterly regime over the weekend slowly fading allowing weak sea breezes and potential delays mid before we head into hopefully a building SW at the end, it is a little too early to have a punt at what the weather conditions will be like for the Round the Island

Check back in a week and there will be some first snippets of what to expect.

As for the IOW Festival it is still looking like a dry and sunny one not perhaps as warm as first thought but definitely looking at 15-18 Celsius