Sailing Seasons

[brodie88]

Hey everyone,

I used this site a few times to find boats the past year to sail around on. I am currently writing an article on how others can find boats and one of my topics is to follow the sailing seasons.

Was hoping to get a few examples from here of the times and places of the different seasons around the world and their respective wind directions.

any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks again.

-Brodie

[monte]

Sounds good. Starting with the Med and Europe in General, May-October are the warmest months so the most popular for cruising. Wind will be variable with some N trades on the Portuguese coast mid season. Most crusiers wanting to travel to the Caribbean will depart the Canaries between Nov and Feb so theres often a lot of crew positions available from the Med, Canaries or Northern Europe leading up to November. Hurricane season in the Caribbean is from around July to Nov so theres not many opportunities sailing there (or none id want to crew on)
Yachts depart the Caribbean heading N and S around May. Many continue up the US East coast or back to Europe via Bermuda and Azores to arrive in time for the Med sailing season. Lots of crewing opportunities around that time although the trip is likely to be more challenging than Canaries- Caribean. Yachts sailing south generally stop in Grenada of Trinidad as its nearer the edge of the Hurricane zone. Not as many opportunities as it can easily be done slowly in day sails by a couple.
Yachts enter the Pacific via Panama canal to time the end of the Pacific cyclone season around March and sail till the Cyclone season resumes around October, so most Pacific crewing opportunities would be sitting in Panama from March onwards, or perhaps Fiji around October looking fro boats headed to NZ or Aus.
Jimmy Cornells world cruising routes book will give a better more detailed description of best times of year to make passages. Id suggest googling sailing rally's as they all tend to go fairly early and it will give you a good idea where to start and probbaly contact details for participants to email for crewing opportunities well ahead of time.
Anyone looking to crew should definately school themselves on the various conditions expected and not trust the owner/skipper to do this. A lot of yachts sail off season and this can be fine, but crew need to be aware of the risks and how they are mitigated.
If you are writing an article to assist people to find crewing postions, I think it would be critical to add in that article, or write a seperate one on how to qualify and asess the potential risks involved, with questions to ask the skipper/owner regarding suitbility of vessel, skippers experience, references, timelines, safety equiptment, etc, which is much more important than simply getting your ass on a sailboat...

[brodie88]

Thanks Monte! all great info and the idea of what too look for and ask the skipper is a great idea. I'll put that in the works too! much appreciated mate!

[barnakiel]

May till October in upper Europe.

It is between October and March from Canary Islands onwards. It is April and May mostly from Canary Islands back to the peninsula.

It is April May and June mostly from the West Indies to Europe.

I think January to May Panama onwards, April thru September Darwin onwards, December till April RSA to BrazIL and West Indies.

b.

[brodie88]

Just for your information, this is the article i posted about finding boats to crew on. Thank you both for your help!

HOW TO FIND A SAILBOAT TO CREW ON