This weather forecast shows promise that our race will take place with almost normal wind and pressure conditions. It is still forming, but the Pacific High Pressure Ridge is taking shape (roughly under the long yellow oval). The magic routing software would have us sail a southerly route. The red star show us theoretically crossing the 130 degrees West longitude at 29 degrees North latitude. Typically, 130 x 30 is considered a good rule of thumb. 130 x 29 would take Sweet Okole over 220 miles of additional sailing compared to rumbline. Another standard rule of thumb is never to get closer to the Pacific High than the 1020 millibar line. As the yellow labels show, the optimal route (red line) clearly would put us above the 1020 line. I'll be watching how this develops very closely.

This is a crazy weather pattern. Would we really have the the gumption to go north of the rhumbline / great circle route? The optimal route assumes that weather conditions would evolve over the 12.5 days it predicts it would take Sweet Okole to finish. With luck weather will settle into more typical summer patterns in the next few weeks.

What is the difference between rhumbline and great circle route? Answer in my next blog :-)

Periodically, I will put up these computer generated forecast maps (aka Grib files) up on the blog. If we had started today, we'd be flying offshore with 25-30 knots of breeze coming from the NNW. The black curving line is the great circle path and the red line is the optimal course according to our "Expedition" routing software