We are about 50 days away from leaving Lake Ontario and heading south to the Caribbean and I started to do some long term planning using Predictwind, a web application that tells us which way the wind blows around the world.
I wanted to get a feel for what the wind in the Atlantic is doing this time of year, because this time next year we will be crossing the Atlantic. We’d start the crossing in about May before hurricane season The course will be from the British Virgin Islands area and head for the Azores, and then to Casablanca, in Northern Africa.
Cruisers like to go mostly downwind and Predictwind tells us which way the wind is blowing now, and where it is likely to be blowing in in the near future. But as an example, we could head east today and in 5 days find out that the wind has changed and is now blowing to the west, directly in front of us, and all our weather planning would have to change and we might have to divert hundreds of miles.
If a boat can average 6 knots per hour, and we are sailing 24 hours per day, we could average 144 miles per day in ideal conditions. We have to know where the wind is blowing now, and where it will be blowing in the near future and adjust our course like magicians or we could add days to the trip.
Today’s weathermap isn’t very encouraging. The Azores High, which circles clockwise around the centre of the Atlantic Ocean has moved very far north. If we followed the black line downwind and the High didn’t change, then the trip becomes almost 4,000 nautical miles, or about 40 days of passagemaking. That takes us too far north and will take too long, I think. It should be about 12 days from the Caribbean to the Azores and another 7 days from the Azores to North Africa.
There are many professionals who use worldwide data and predict where the wind and weather will change over a short period of time. Savvy sailors receive updates and guidance every day from these weather services. This allows them to adjust their direction to the safest and most efficient course. But in the end, each skipper must take all the information they have at the time to make safe and efficient decisions.
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