What weather information makes you take action when offshore?

[slug]

The modern stuff .. high resolution gribs via satelite , allow. you to utilize much shorter weather windows

Threading thru short windows is particularly useful when you must make way against prevailing winds or offseason passages

[MicHughV]

I eventually outfitted my boat with a Ham and SSB radio ...this enabled me to get the "high seas" weather forecast...and then I really went upscale, when I could plug a small laptop computer to it and download weather fax maps.

This was all good and well, but it took forever to download a map, and trying to decipher it was more than my brain could handle and this was a short lived experiment.

In the end, I could contact the father of my girlfriend via Ham, who was an avid old school ham, his backyard sprouted more antenna's I could count and we had a daily sked with him, so that he could check up on the well being of his daughter, but also provide us with some weather data. His weather descriptions were brief and to the point "you're looking good, keep doing what you're doing", which was enough for me.
Occasionally, I'd get " don't go that way, go this way", if I asked why, I'd get" because I said so"....which was also good enuff explanation for me.

[HBrew]

In addition to the items mentioned above, I also use weather forecasting to plan departure timing. The ability to see multiple departure days side by side and evaluate the best time to leave is very helpful and I believe gives me more time sailing in enjoyable conditions.

One example last year, I planned to sail from Panama to Ecuador. Passing through the ITCZ meant that motoring was always on the cards, but by monitoring the movements of the ITCZ over several days while we hung out at Las Perlas we were able to sail the whole way with just 8 hours of motoring

Of course it's just a forecast, but I think it adds greatly to the pleasure of sailing

[IslandInfedel]

Ships Radar
Barometer
Being aware of wind and temperature changes.
Looking for rain spouts, cloud colors and shapes

For planning data connection and navionics and predict wind or digging through opencpn

[dick sargent]

Years ago, before weather communications, I used barometer readings and wind directions to determine my course. Worked!

[Montanan]

If in doubt I go bump the barometer just to be sure the needle isn't stuck.

[laika]

Just wanted to throw in a quick note on the inreach wx capabilities.. standalone the forecasts are much better than nothing, but can be greatly enhanced if you have someone shoreside who can text you much more detailed wx .. as it were, a modern version of the ham comms described previously. if you also pair your inreach via the earthmate app to your smartphone, you can get detailed briefings in a much more digestible format and can communicate via text with your shoreside briefer directly over your phone.

[LittleWing77]

Sorry XSlim, but your question is a bit specious.

Regardless of the method of obtaining weather information, any good captain is continuously taking action on weather information.

It is a constant process and the first consideration - always.

For instance, I am sitting here in Toronto looking out the window in the early morning and there is absolutely no wind at all - at the moment. Forecast is for there to be a bit in the afternoon.

We'll be going for a sail this aft.
LittleWing77

[Tom and Maje]

Originally Posted by slug

I use the weather to avoid becoming becalmed and to avoid headwinds

We do too. While we were sailing in the Caribbean and back and forth from the Caribbean, and on our transatlantic, we bought weather.

Maje

[MicHughV]

It's all a matter of perspective.

My girlfriend's dad was a globe girdler himself, long before I was born. His depth sounder was a lead weight on the end of a marked rope. He was an avid Ham, and had rigged a homemade, morse code only, radio on his boat. He could send and receive code quicker than I could talk. He was a master with a sextant.

He is gone now, but back then, he must have been 70 or 80 and still had his old boat. He was retired and living on social security and couldn't afford to keep his old boat at a marina. He had somehow or another found a deep enough channel leading of from the ICW in central Florida. This channel led back into the swamps and woods near the mobile home where he lived, and he anchored it there.
He took me there one time. He placed a canoe in the back of his truck, his boat's dink, and took me off down some County road, where he parked in the middle of nowhere to launch his canoe. I could not tell you where we went, as we went this way and that way until we came to his boat. I was stunned to see it there. He wasn't worried about theft as he informed me " lotsa gators around here"...

To him, the weather was the weather, and you just took your lumps as they came. If it became to rough, he just stopped the boat. He still took his old boat to the B'mas throughout the year. I recall it had a one lung engine of some kind. He never told anyone when he planned to leave, he just left, destination unknown.

Though he knew I had built my own boat, he considered me a whipper snapper, and couldn't understand what his daughter saw in me.

He was bound and determined that I get my own Ham license, so he could stay in touch with his daughter.

When he wasn't off sailing, he was building a small plane in a shed behind his mobile home.

They don't make 'em like that anymore.

Not trying to cause a thread drift here, but presenting an old school point of view of how it was done back then.

[mjscottinnc]

Today for each of us there is a happy place between too little and too much information. But I do long for the days when the weather forecast was what you felt, smelled, heard, and saw. It does make you wonder sometime how much better we actually are.

[IslandInfedel]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

It's all a matter of perspective.

My girlfriend's dad was a globe girdler himself, long before I was born. His depth sounder was a lead weight on the end of a marked rope. He was an avid Ham, and had rigged a homemade, morse code only, radio on his boat. He could send and receive code quicker than I could talk. He was a master with a sextant.

He is gone now, but back then, he must have been 70 or 80 and still had his old boat. He was retired and living on social security and couldn't afford to keep his old boat at a marina. He had somehow or another found a deep enough channel leading of from the ICW in central Florida. This channel led back into the swamps and woods near the mobile home where he lived, and he anchored it there.
He took me there one time. He placed a canoe in the back of his truck, his boat's dink, and took me off down some County road, where he parked in the middle of nowhere to launch his canoe. I could not tell you where we went, as we went this way and that way until we came to his boat. I was stunned to see it there. He wasn't worried about theft as he informed me " lotsa gators around here"...

To him, the weather was the weather, and you just took your lumps as they came. If it became to rough, he just stopped the boat. He still took his old boat to the B'mas throughout the year. I recall it had a one lung engine of some kind. He never told anyone when he planned to leave, he just left, destination unknown.

Though he knew I had built my own boat, he considered me a whipper snapper, and couldn't understand what his daughter saw in me.

He was bound and determined that I get my own Ham license, so he could stay in touch with his daughter.

When he wasn't off sailing, he was building a small plane in a shed behind his mobile home.

They don't make 'em like that anymore.

Not trying to cause a thread drift here, but presenting an old school point of view of how it was done back then.

We need to go back in history and see where we went from him to the what we have today and remedy the mistake

[CassidyNZ]

I agree with the analysis/paralysis perspective but have to admit getting caught up in it to a degree.

Back in the day, we relied on SSB and a weather guru on land somewhere that could advise us on our chances/risks/opportunities as far as weather went. On a voyage from the US to NZ we had an old gent in CA who accurately lead us back home and a daily chat was all that was needed.

Similarly, back in 2004 I used a shore-based weatherman in Durban, South Africa to take me all the way “against the tide” to Christmas Island (Indian Ocean). He kept us safe from a Cat 5 cyclone named Gafilo (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Gafilo) that decimated Madagascar and came within 200nm of our position. He even talked us into a tiny refuge harbour for which we had no charts and I will be eternally grateful for that.

Sadly both those gents are gone now. It seems there is an ever-diminishing availability of these wonderful people.

Nowadays it’s Iridium Go, iPad, etc to download daily GRIBs and predict from that. But I must add that I still record barometric readings in the log at each watch change and still use the old Buys-Ballot principle to determine position of the centre of a low pressure system. It has always worked well for me and helps me stay in the safe sector of a potential storm.

Unfortunately Buys-Ballot doesn’t help to identify a rapidly developing squash zone. I discovered that when we were subjected to the most serious weather event I ever wish to experience.

[redneckrob]

A much higher percentage of folks sailing just disappeared in the "good old days" everyone is reminiscing about. It's crazy to assert that better situational awareness of weather is anything but a good thing. Can you imagine any professional mariner with that take on seamanship?

[MicHughV]

" back in the day"......weather routers were not around, sat radio's, sat data, epirb's, etc, weren't either.....you could get a reasonable forecast for the day you left and maybe a day or two after....and after that you were pretty much on your own..."disappearing" was a known factor, but that did not deter many from going...