CYOB Inbox: September 12, 2019 – Whither the weather
Sept 12, 2019
Hi John,
I was reading your intro today talking about weather apps (CYOB, August 22.) I find I am constantly using more than one to see different data. WeatherNetwork for day to day stuff, including looking at the radar. WindGuru and Windy for wind predictions. Tides for tidal data. iCSC for night sky clearness for looking up at the heavens.
Recently, I have started playing around with a new app called Saildrone, which is a side project for a company based in San Francisco that makes autonomous sailing drones that gather scientific data. They are doing some pretty amazing things with the drones (circumnavigation of Antarctica). The app provides weather, wind and tidal data all in one pretty nice interface. I haven’t tried the HD paid version yet but it looks promising. You can also see the forecast on your desktop. https://forecast.saildrone.com
James Wisener, Ottawa
Nacra 580s. Spend most of my time sailing in the Kawartha Lakes area and Ottawa.
Ed: By coincidence, we have an article on the Saildrone project in this week’s edition.
Ventusky!
Hi
For weather I have been using Ventusky Weather. It is far more accurate than anything that I have ever used. Have the full weather program and have tracked weather across sections of Northern Ontario and talked to people in a few different locations to check on how close the program was and it was as close as you can get. On the lake out of Thunder Bay, in the summer, no program is accurate because, of the change in water temps due to the direction the wind is blowing and the high hill that actually redirects the cold fronts and thunder storms. The lake has a blocking effect.
Jim Massey
Weather blogs
Good morning,
Thanks for the updates. As we have cruised full time over the last seven years in the South Pacific and Micronesia it has been nice to keep in touch with goings on in the Canadian yachting world.
We have used various programs and apps over the seven years away but over the last few years we have used two main programs. For GRIBS we use Predictwind Offshore and for text forecasts and weather fax we use Sailmail.
I have written a blog post on how we use weather information
that was turned into an article for the Bluewater Cruising Association and the New Zealand Island Cruising Association if that is of use to your readership.
Our situation as offshore cruisers is of course different from the average Canadian sailor as we rarely have cellular data so we need to obtain our data via our SSB radio and more recently with an Iridium Go.
Hope this is useful. I was going to write more for this email but we will ironically be leaving cellular coverage again shortly.
If you would like to know more about our travels CBC has been doing some articles on us and, of course, we have a blog at SV-Fluenta.blogspot.ca
Cheers,
Max
SV Fluenta
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JM
