A wonderful thing about sailing is that it is ALWAYS about learning! As I said, skippering takes a lifetime to learn, but as you are rightly implying, there is a certain minimum of knowledge that you must gain quickly in order to carry a skipper's first responsibility: Keeping the crew safe, which can only be done by keeping the ship safe. Weather is the principal threat to ships, and therefore even a neophyte
skipper MUST be able to do weather forecasting in HIS locale.
You need to set yourself a syllabus on the subject of meteorology. But you cannot divine that
learning. It must come either from formal courses or from textbooks you use for self-study. You can find introductory texts either at your local lending library or at second-hand bookstores. Start with simple stuff: In your locale, what point of the
compass does "weather" (meaning dangerous winds) come from? What are the typical cloud formations that herald the coming of weather? What use is the barometer? How does the rise and fall of the barometer in combination with observations of how the winds shift through the points of the
compass help you to predict how weather is going to develop in the next several hours?
Once you understand those fundamentals, you will find yourself constantly aware of the dynamics of the local weather, and weather forecasting becomes rather subliminal - you "feel it in your bones". Until you get to that point, best not to set yourself up a
skipper :-) But as always, you only learn about
danger by going near it, so do do that. Go out in increasingly severe weather, to see for yourself what weather can do to you and your ship. And what your own reaction to it will be. But like I always have, ALWAYS have an "escape plan". I said I'm a woos ;-). Have a hidey-hole within reach, OR have a ship that can take the weather, remembering that a WELL-found small sailboat will take care of her crew better than the crew can take care of her :-) A
small boat that ISN'T equipped to take what the weather will be offering her is a danger to all aboard, and to those who might try to
rescue her!
Here is a link to a program that is free and will begin to show you something about weather patterns: Look at the wind-arrows that indicate wind direction and strengths. Note the pattern of "swirls".
https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais...y:49.3/zoom:10
Just this morning there is nothing particularly noteworthy off the coast of
Florida. This programme is updated every few minutes, so just keep watching it over a period of days and you will begin to get a feel for the movement of cyclones in your locale and therefore for the development of "weather". There is a "baby cyclone" off the coast of
Belize, so look at that to see what a cyclone looks like on a weather chart.
This morning, so sez this chart, if you were on a "rhumb line" (more or less) from
Miami to
Nassau, you'd expect the winds to be slightly forward of your starboard beam, and that they would blow at something like 15 knots.
"The Coasties" transmit weather reports ("synopses") on a dedicated weather channel on your
VHF. As I go about my skippering, and I am listening to our local WX channel, a mental picture develops in my
head that is very much like the chart in the link above. Listen to your WX channel to begin to develop this ability.
So in summary: STUDY, learn to use the tools, and practice, practice, practice! :-)
TP