La Vagabonde's crossing

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Terje Vigen

Our friends apparently have reefed down for the night, maintaining a rather modest boat speed of 7.6 knots, now on a ESE'erly direction (2316 GMT Sunday 1 December).
It appears that they are heading upstream the Tagus river, all the way up to Lisbon city center - ref the following tweet from Greta Thunberg:

Makes sense..
All the better for the media.. get a big parade of boats to escort them up the river and under the bridge and into Al Cantara Dock..
Much more media friendly/accessible..
PUBLICITY..

[Breaking Waves]

4m significant waves, so a few 7 or 8m ones around.

[OldKetch]

Originally Posted by smj

Ah, your an oil man and afraid it may affect your pocketbook? That is the main reason for the disbelief? $$$$$$$$$?

May I call your attention that the market capitalization of the "Green Economy" is estimated at over $4,000,000,000,000?

That's an awful lot of money chasing green returns and interested in pushing the green propaganda. It is comparable to the Fossil Fuel Economy, but grows much faster. The global revenue of the "Green Economy" was estimated at $7,870,000,000,000 in 2015/16.

You know, those stinky fund managers are laughing all the way to the bank when they get not only free campaigns for the products of their investee companies, but also strong push to get governments spend (or mandate spending) many more trillions ($x,000,000,000,000) on those products, with the slogan "if the girl is wrong then it does not matter"?

Yes, it does matter if those trillions are invested in education and infrastructure instead of trying to engineer a solution for our climate that is "breaking down" (one of those highly catchy, yet absolutely nonsensical terms used by GT reflecting on her lack of understanding nature).

[boatman61]

At the moment getting reports of a mono being rolled in the surf at Figuera da Foz..
Likely tried entering to escape the weather and got rolled.. appears just a couple on board, woman medi vaced by chopper to Coimbra hospital.
Always a bad move.. better to stay at sea than try entering these ports in significant swell.. if they'd stayed out they could have made it into Peniche further down the coast and an easy sheltered entrance.

[Normanskier]

Originally Posted by DDouglasone

"I was saddened to hear about the terror attack in London yesterday - and the anger that is so prevalent."

What an absolute piece of ****.

She's a nut. Saddened at the prevalent anger by Brits at the horror of their countrymen being murdered on the streets?

This attitude, where does it come from where you hate your own people!?!

Sick. Done.

Huh? No idea what you are saying.

[Normanskier]

Originally Posted by atoll

just thought i would lighten the mood,and it looks like this thread will be done and dusted in another 2 days.

anyway back to sailing

Actually it will only you who will be dusted. The object will have long legs. And the entire crew is to be commended.

[Budawang]

I bet Riley has learnt a lot from Nikki over the last couple of weeks. He was already a competent skipper, but must now be quite confident in his abilities and maybe feeling like he can take on the Southern Ocean. Sounds like they make a great team.

Outremer will be delighted it's turned out so we - touch wood. That lease is turning out to be one of the best investments they ever made.

[ontherocks83]

https://www.theblaze.com/news/greta-...n-luxury-yacht

Not so sure what they mean by the last paragraph but the rest is interesting.

[Exile]

Originally Posted by ontherocks83

https://www.theblaze.com/news/greta-...n-luxury-yacht

Not so sure what they mean by the last paragraph but the rest is interesting.

The last para. was referring to the racing yacht that brought Greta over to the US, not La Vaga.

[OldKetch]

Originally Posted by ontherocks83

https://www.theblaze.com/news/greta-...n-luxury-yacht

Not so sure what they mean by the last paragraph but the rest is interesting.

If you follow the link in the article, you may read the following about her first crossing >to< America.

"Greta was ferried to America on board the elite racing yacht Malizia II by Pierre Casiraghi, a member of Monaco’s ruling Grimaldi family, and the youngest grandson of Princess Grace Kelly. The irony of protesting capitalism and oil on board a carbon-fiber (petrochemical) yacht owned by European royals who made billions operating Monaco as a tax haven was rich."

[boatpoker]

Originally Posted by ontherocks83

https://www.theblaze.com/news/greta-...n-luxury-yacht

Not so sure what they mean by the last paragraph but the rest is interesting.

I believe the last paragraph is referring to her first (east to west) crossing to Manhattan on Malizia II

Oooops, too slow

[ontherocks83]

I got it now, thanks for the clarification. I have not been following her or her antics.

[Maapallo]

After having read along since the start of this thread I now registered after all to make this first post.

Thank you so much to everybody, BW and everybody else! I learned so many things. It was great to follow this thread every day. As a non-sailor (who has sailing friends) I have gained a whole new level of respect for what it takes, how knowledgeable and experienced and alert one has to be, what a calling it is. Hats off to those who pull it off!

Second, hats off also to the forum, because even though the thread decended into some nasty places at times, in my opinion, it always found itself again, dug itself out. That is no mean feat these days. (And I expect seasoned sailors to have a grumpy opinion or two.)

Finally, I hope it is within scope if as a climate scientist I perhaps provide two little on-topic bits of knowledge about changes that may be coming to the North Atlantic that likely will affect passages such as Vaga's in the future. It is quite interesting, I think. There are mainly two effects we're studying right now:

The first is that there is increasing evidence that the North Atlantic overturning circulation, in parts better known as the Gulf Stream, is somewhat slowing down (about 15% since the mid 20th century). This means less heat is transported to the North Atlantic. If this should continue and get stronger you can easily imagine the effect that will have on the formation of weather systems and the weather in Europe, generally. Actually, modelling studies show that the possibility cannot be ruled out that the overturning circulation could even break down at some point, which would change everything (we know it has been instable in the deeper past). Three pieces of evidence support the thought: first, while almost every part of the Earth has warmed, there is a large patch in the northern Atlantic SE of Greenland that has actually cooled - less heat is arriving, say the numbers; second, a weakening of the gulf stream would imply that it moves closer to the coast of North America, and indeed one can observe in data a warming of a large part of those waters just as one would expect (is there any knowledge in the sailing community about the gulf stream eddies being closer to the coast than a few decades ago?); and third, there are several additional independent lines of proxy evidence pointing to a slowdown. The cause is likely the increased influx of freshwater into the North Atlantic as Greenland melts more than it did, due to warming. Salinty gradients are what drives the gulf stream, and are declining due to the meltwater influx. And finally: if one runs a atmospere-ocean climate simulation model with doubled co2 concentration, the change produced for sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic on the computer has exactly the pattern we're seeing in the actual measurements today: warming everywhere, but cooling SE of Greenland, and noticeable warming along the US East coast (btw, this warming is co-causing large eastern US snow storms in the winter). So it is not about gradual warming that we should be most worried about, but such knock-on effects like changes in large-scale circulation, here of the ocean. Anytime something this big changes in the ocean, it is going to have potentially profound consequences for the weather systems (and btw, of course things have always changed, which just shows they are not totally robust and stable against influences - so if now we humans are turning some of the big knobs, like co2 in the atmosphere, past fluctuations would suggest that the system will indeed react - in this case, we'd be entering territory we've not been in for the past 3 million years, since humans appeared as a species, as far as we know.)

The second is that more and more evidence has come out that the jet streams that pattern the weather systems in the northern hemisphere including the North Atlantic have had wobbly configurations more frequently than in the past, that is to say, large meanders to the north and south. This was arcance knowledge we climate scientists had a few years ago but it recently has made its way into the more general news and weather reports etc. We think the reason is that the temperature difference between the tropics and the Arctic has declined since around 2000 because with global warming, the Arctic warms faster, reducing the difference. Atmospheric dynamics is a really complex topic, so we're not totally sure, but we think there is now an increased chance of what is called a quasi-resonance between two kinds of planetary waves in the atmosphere: one travelling around, one stationary as created by mountain chains etc. When these two wave patterns enter a kind of resonance, they can self-stabilize. This is when we have cold air from the North flowing far south, or warm air from the South flowing very far North. This has always happened, and gave us spells of weather, but more recently these phenomena have not decayed after a few days like they used to, but stabilize as decribed and have lasted for 3-4 weeks rather than 3-4 days. Many of the droughts or floods or cold spells or heat waves (depending on where you are in the pattern) in the past 20 years show this wave number 6-8 pattern around the Northern hemisphere in the data. The economic losses are large. And the frequency of these occurrences has been up. What is worrisome is that the heat wave parts of the pattern are centered on the world's bread baskets: the mid-US, W. Europe, Central Asia. But this is a North Atlantic navigation thread, so I'd just like to point out that in addition to ocean circulation potentially changing, with large impacts on weather systems, atmospheric circulation is also beginning to show effects, also with large effects on weather systems. Actually, the two might even be coupled: the jet stream wind systems like to play around that N. Atlantic area of deep water formation, so the cooling there could actually influence the atmospheric waves, as well. And we're just at the beginning of what real climate change might bring in a few decades.

So in that sense the Vaga's journey of plotting a course through and with the weather systems was the crew being immersed in some of the very things that climate warming is affecting in a way that could turn out to be something much bigger in a few decades: gulf stream weakening or shut-down, more extreme weather patterns forming.

Actually, GT visited our research institute to inform herself, as she does, discussing directly with the scientists (without fanfare or press or public relations present). She rightfully says: talk not to me, talk to the scientists (when testifying to a US congressional hearing, she did not submit her own statement, but rather a UN-mandated scientific report, saying it is not about her, but about the science - the one that produces the forecasts, too. Btw, who says that only he/she who is perfectly zero-carbon can campaign for climate protection? She travels by train, too.)

And then we can have a conversation. Plotting a course involves so much knowledge of weather systems and their behaviour, perhaps there is a meeting of minds.

It would be interesting to see the kinds of weather patterns an Atlantic crossing would be expecting in the year 2075.

[Budawang]

Originally Posted by Maapallo

Finally, I hope it is within scope if as a climate scientist I perhaps provide two little on-topic bits of knowledge about changes that may be coming to the North Atlantic that likely will affect passages such as Vaga's in the future. It is quite interesting, I think. There are mainly two effects we're studying right now:


The second is that more and more evidence has come out that the jet streams that pattern the weather systems in the northern hemisphere including the North Atlantic have had wobbly configurations more frequently than in the past, that is to say, large meanders to the north and south.

Actually, GT visited our research institute to inform herself, as she does, discussing directly with the scientists (without fanfare or press or public relations present). She rightfully says: talk not to me, talk to the scientists (when testifying to a US congressional hearing, she did not submit her own statement, but rather a UN-mandated scientific report, saying it is not about her, but about the science - the one that produces the forecasts, too. Btw, who says that only he/she who is perfectly zero-carbon can campaign for climate protection? She travels by train, too.)

Hallelujah!!! An actual climate scientist commenting on the science of climate change! What a breath of fresh air compared to the usual barrage of ill-informed denialist nonsense.

Down here in the southern hemisphere we had a highly unusual sudden stratospheric warming event over Antarctica in August which meteorologists are saying is linked to the severe drought here in Australia and perhaps also in South Africa. The weather has certainly been weird with extreme heat interrupted by strong cold fronts in the south east (it's currently snowing down to about 1400 metres while two weeks ago here in Canberra it reached 39 degrees celsius breaking an all time November record) and a much delayed northern wet season. I wonder if this is a related phenomenon to the wobbly jet stream in the northern hemisphere?

[cyan]

Originally Posted by Maapallo

...Salinty gradients are what drives the gulf stream, and are declining due to the meltwater influx...

You present some interesting information. However, this statement is a curious one on its own. Most theories I've seen regarding the Gulf Stream mechanics cite geostrophic currents and the Coriolis effect as the dominant forces that drive each gyre, with salinity gradients working as a minor component to that. (UCSD, etc) Can you please cite a paper on "salinity gradients" as the driving force? TIA