Our first encounter with a big squall was sailing from San Diego to Ensenada, Mexico. We left at 0200 to ensure we’d get into Ensenada before our 1300 haulout time. The National Weather Service had forecast consistent 15-20 knot winds from the northwest, which was perfect for ...read more
Jeremy Davis is one of the head forecasters at Weather Routing Inc. (WRI), based in Glens Falls, New York, where he’s worked for the past 17 years. We recently caught up with Davis to learn more about his passion for weather, climate change and more. How would you describe your ...read more
To begin, know the parts of your sailboat You don't need to know much about how a piston engine works in order to drive a car. You get in, turn on the engine, shift into gear, step on the gas, and off you go. In a sailboat, though, you play a far more active role in harnessing ...read more
In planning for the upcoming 2016 Pacific Cup—a race that takes sailors from San Francisco to Oahu, Hawaii—I was interested in tools for predicting the optimal route. Depending on the location of the Pacific high-pressure system and El Niño, sailing the rhumb line may not be ...read more
By their nature, larger catamarans are exceptionally safe offshore. It is not unusual to sail through mildly uncomfortable conditions, such as a gale, only to arrive in port and hear sailors on keelboats talk of “surviving” horrendous weather. A large modern catamaran has ...read more
When sailing close to the coast it often seems that NOAA’s wind forecasts are maddeningly inaccurate. How could NOAA get it so wrong? The answer, of course, is that they didn’t. NOAA’s forecasts refer to prevailing winds, but as sailors we need to account for how the land ...read more
The fog was rolling in quickly, and the sun would soon be setting. I was bound for Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod, a long peninsula that extends east and loops north like the tip of an elf’s shoe. The land curls so tightly around Provincetown Harbor that it makes for an ...read more
If you live in what some call temperate latitudes, there’s a good chance you are just about to take your last sail of the season and are well along with plans to haul your boat for the winter. This is an inevitable progression for most sailors who live in communities that budget ...read more
MAKE A PLANNING SPREADSHEET I use Microsoft Excel spreadsheets for my planning documents, and I use four different worksheets. The main sheet covers a full year of sailing (I know, that sounds like a lot of planning but I have found that it is very helpful to me) while the other ...read more
This is now: SAIL contributing editor Ben Ellison, after a pilgrimage to the government's Tropical Prediction Center on the campus of Florida State University, some 12 miles west of downtown Miami, says: "Without doubt the most thorough and timely hurricane information is on the ...read more