Weather to stay or weather to go?
23 September 2009 | Port of San Luis
The sun came out!
"Weather is a crap shoot" our friend Lois, of S/V Blind Faith stated17 years ago when we were in Hawaii. Now, even with all the sophisticated new resources, it really still is.
In addition to the traditional NOAA reports (which many refer to as the "liars club") we have grib files, weather faxes and intenet based weather services such as Passage Weather and Buoy Weather. There's so much you can look at all day! And then go away not having a better clue than when you started. There definitly is such a thing as too much information.
The biggest problem is that marine weather can change unexpectedly when a system either slows down or picks up speed throwing the whole forecast off. It's not a problem when you're just doing a day hop, but when you're going to be out over 24 hours it can make a big difference -- like what happened when we were heading to Crescent City and the big winds and seas started developing about 12 hours before the prediction.
Planning to round Point Conception is a difficult one, because it is known for it's high winds and the recommendation is to round it at night (when the winds are generally lowest). And from San Luis, the closest jumping off place, it is 60 miles to round the point to Cojo anchorage and another 40 if you want to make it all the way to Santa Barbara.
Yesterday it was our intention to leave about midnight and go to the Cojo anchorage. That way we would only have a 6 hour night at sea instead of 12. But, the winds were predicted to be strong through this morning so we changed our plans and now will leave later this afternoon and go all the way to Santa Barbara or even Oxnard (another 30 miles) if we're up to it.
One piece of information that has really helped are the buoy reports -- real time data showing what's happening out there. While in San Francisco I found an ap for my iPhone that gives us the buoy reports, so now we're able to check them anytime I have phone service (which is just about all the time now). We checked them last night for the point and were very glad we stayed put!
Now we'll have another long night at sea, but we are well rested -- this is a great anchorage! And only time will tell if we've made the right decision, because it's always a gamble and you get what you get. But I always keep in mind another thing that Lois would say: "and this too, shall pass".