It turns out that there are weather buoys located in the Arctic, in a
program run by the University of Washington. These buoys placed near the
North Pole generally move south down the passage between Greenland and the
Coast of Norway(?) as I recall. Maybe it was the other coast. In any event,
if you want to know about all the resources of weather information from
buoys then this program is one that you should keep track of. At the
opposite ends of the earth, the South Africans have a program of dropping
drifting buoys from ships transiting the ocean south of Cape of Good Hope
between there and the Antarctic, with some of the buoys ending up in the
Indian Ocean.

These drifting buoy programs tend to get data from any individual buoy for
a period of a year or 2 and then the buoys go silent as they age, are
damaged or sink. For folks making long ocean passages, especially under
power and without sails or deep keels and are perhaps more dependent on
weather, knowing the buoy reports available and where to get the
information should have a high priority.

I have been doing a conscious study of this subject recently and posted a
fairly lengthy article about the general results on the Trawlers and
Trawlering Forum.

The other weather subject that passage makers should be well versed in is
that of the QuickScat satellites. There are 3 such machines in orbit making
maps of wave height and direction over the ocean covered areas of the
world. They use radar to measure phase shifting caused by surface waves on
the ocean's surface. These phase shifts can be converted into wave height
and direction information. Most locations are scanned twice each day,
perhaps every 12 hours or so. The weather service's around the world are
using this information in their forecasts. But, you would be well advised
to know how this system works, how accurate it is, what degrades accuracy
and keep an eye on whether there are gaps in the coverage at any time that
might have an impact on your particular situation/location.

The QuickScat system is not foolproof and if you are going to rely on the
maps generated you should have a clear understanding of how the maps are
created, the reliability of the information acquired and the sources of
error which can come into play.

Capt. Mike Maurice
Tualatin(Portland), Oregon

Mike,

Is this the basis for the wave and wind information provided in the 10 day
outlook that can be downloaded and overlaid on the MaxSea charting software
?

Regards, John Harris

My first offshore experience was in early June of 1953 when I crewed on my
father's sailboat from Seattle to Los Angeles nonstop prior to the start of
the Transpacific Yacht Race.  Later that summer I crewed from Kauai back to
Seattle, 20 days. Two years later I did the same two trips, plus crewed in
the race itself.  In 1961 I crewed on another of his boats from Tahiti to
Kona, HI, via Riataia, Bora Bora, and the line islands.

Much later (1992) my wife and I took our 54' Kadey-Krogen from Camden, ME to
St. Martin via Bermuda.  We spent a year and a half in the Eastern Caribbean
and eventually took her from Puerto Rico to the ABC Islands, to Panama, and
up the West Coast to Seattle.

In 2000 we left Seattle in Que Linda, our brand-new custom trawler.  We
stopped at Newport OR on our way to San Francisco where we spent six weeks.
Then we harbor-hopped to southern California, eventually leaving in November
for Florida, where we arrived the following April.  Along the way we fell in
love with Roatan, Honduras, and have been back there every winter since.
Summers have been spent somewhere north of Norfolk, VA.

In late May of this year we joined the Nordhavn Atlantic Rally for the trip
across the Atlantic.  After the rally broke up on July fourth in Gibraltar,
we spent a few weeks in southern Spain before having to return home for a
short while.  On our return to Spain we spent 40 hours going to Fomentera in
the Balearic Islands.  After six weeks in the Balearics we took the boat to
Barcelona and put her away for the winter.  We plan on returning in the
spring and going directly to Croatia and plan on spending the summer between
Venice and Turkey.

There is a log of our cruising on Que Linda at www.halwyman.com

I'm another retiree from the world of software, having started when
ultra-fast memory consisted of little tiny metal doughnuts and cost
$8.00/byte.  Speed was around 500KHz (2 microsecond cycle time.)

Home port is Seattle, although I don't think Que Linda will be back for
quite some time.

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