We crossed the Atlantic and made landfall in the tiny archipelago called The Azores on the island of Faial in the port of Horta. According to the marina manager, this port is the 4th most visited marina in the world; though they were not able to tell me who the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd were. Regardless, this marina was packed and we needed to find a place to leave the boat for a few months while we flew home to visit with family in the states. This marina was completely full, but they were kind enough to communicate and coordinate with the marina in Angra do Heroismo in Terceira for us.
Angra had space available for us to leave the boat on the hard while we flew back to the states. At this point, we thought we were going to spend a short period of time on the hard while we did some minor maintenance on the boat before sailing on; little did we know!
The sail from Horta to Angra do Heroismo was short and sweet. We made the passage in a full day, starting at around 8am in Horta and arriving at around 8am in Angra, then next day. Sometimes we do dream we were that fast, and then we wake up from that dream and realize that reality is much slower on a sailboat.
The interesting thing with this passage is how quickly we made it given the predicted winds and times given by Predict Wind. No, we do not pay for it or use it, but a friend of ours in Horta did pay for the full version and ran the numbers for us. I looked at the sky and based on the barometric pressure and the cloud formations decided that it would be a good time to make that passage, but Predict Wind warned otherwise!
Well, Predict Wind anticipated us having a head wind the whole way and taking around 1.5 days to make the passage. The truth is we had a beam wind most of the time and managed to make the passage in only 24 hours! The winds were much stronger than forecasted and blowing in a very favorable direction. This let us sail safely and quickly through the islands and arrive at the beginning of the day instead of coming into port in the dark like Predict Wind anticipated we would.
This is my gripe with weather routing programs: They are only as good as the data that is put into the program, and that data is not very good. The weather is finicky and there are way too many variables to possibly calculate exactly what is going to occur on ever square unit of the entire surface of the world!
I have many friends who have found themselves in very dangerous situation simply because Predict Wind said it was safe to go or if they left at a certain moment they would have “X” conditions. The truth is, forecasts tend to be wrong which means your planned route will be wrong as well!
I am not saying that my brain is better at planning out the weather by simply looking at the sky and fully comprehending everything around me. No! What I’m saying is that I can look at the sky and see that it is good to go, or not good to go. We always leave somewhere early so that if it takes us all day and all night to get somewhere, we then have all following day to arrive and get into the harbor! It’s not that we “know” what specific time we need to come and go, and especially what specific hour we will arrive! All of that is a mystery to me and I won’t know until I get there.
I strongly feel that people blindly follow what technology tells them without doing something as simple as looking at the sky and seeing what the clouds are doing. Are the clouds speeding by really fast? Are they streaked out across the sky? Are they whispy? All of these indicate that the winds up there are moving really fast and the surface winds will eventually follow. They also mean that the weather is changing as this weather is going away and something else is going to fill in the void. With skies like that, I think twice before deciding to go out to sea. I know that if we go, it will be a rough and wet ride, and definitely not a comfortable sail!
If I look up at the sky and see fluffy white clouds that are gracefully floating along in the sky, not moving too fast but also not stationary; then I know that the weather out there will be calm and settled. If there is wind, the wind will probably hold steadily for as long as the clouds remain. If the clouds start to move faster, I know that the winds will pick up speed. If the clouds start to rocket up into the sky, I know that a squall is going to form and we should prepare while it is still calm.
I do not fully understand everything that is going to happen in the weather, and I do not know what the weather will do in the future. I do know what the weather is doing now, and what the clouds are saying the weather will be doing in the next few days. If it looks like weather I want to sail in with winds in the right direction, then we will set sail and ride the winds that blow. No programs, no electronics, no computers. Sailing in its simplest form with its simplest of properties: a sailor and a yacht.
