How much time do you spend waiting for weather windows?

[Bill_Giles]

My cruising is mainly coastal stuff. When I cruise I like to have a day off now and again so that I don’t sail every day. Therefore my days off days generally coincide with windy days. Although a few years ago we did get stuck with gales on gales. Half the crew had to get home by ferry and rail as they had to return to work.

[nofacey]

Cruised the world, learned that waiting is worth it…..seldom more than a couple days for a smoother, faster transit. As a percentage of our travel time, it was negligible.

What was interesting was watching the herd effect……in certain areas ( southern Tonga to New Zealand comes to mind) the weather can be serious and the jump off points limited, so when systems come thru close together, the number of boats in one anchorage looking for a good window starts climbing, and everyone is watching, waiting, talking weather.
People get so many conflicting opinions that they go into paralysis - and then one impatient guy goes ‘ aw **** it’ and departs…..and the herd follows!
We learnt to pick our weather info sources and stick with them - usually left a day or two later, and had wayyy better runs.

Forecasts are usually only reliable 3 days out, frequently okay to 5, and little more than chaos beyond that. For longer critical passages, you’re looking for side indicators that give you a cycle of stable weather…..usually works for New Zealand, not so much the Cape of Good Hope (where at least you can run for a close port)

[Jimmyhenry]

Spent two weeks waiting in Fiji last October. Had to spend time at Musket Cove and Mana Island. Real nuisance. All that swimming, diving and in the $2.00 bar.

[MJH]

Originally Posted by dustman

For those of you who have sailed around the world or have extensive sailing experience; what percentage of your total traveling time is spent waiting for good weather windows?

When I circumnavigated Vancouver Island counterclockwise entering the Graveyard of the Pacific in my San Juan 28 I waited a week between Port McNeill and Port Hardy for two low pressures systems to pass through. It was my first experience in the Pacific Ocean and a test for the boat...I ended up buying a bluewater boat.

Sailing to keep up with a schedule for any reason is folly and poor management. Your gut will tell you when extra caution is warranted.

[SomeGuyInaShirt]

So far I typically wait around a week but it's not like I'm just waiting, usually I'm buying food or spare parts and doing maintenance or repairs. 🙂

[wholybee]

Don't forget that sometimes you leave early. I will think of a target date I want to leave, and start looking for a window a week before then. If it is better to leave early instead of on time, that is what I do.

[geozeck]

We waited 38 days in Key West waiting for the right weather several days out in pass between Cuba and the Yucatan. Well worth it.

[Lambretta]

We have two rules when it comes to a passage overnight or longer (but after 3 days all bets are off and then you leave on longer passages at the optimal time of the year)

Rule #1 - Always sail to the weather and not a date

Rule #2 - Never forget Rule #1

[Theo89]

My mistake has always been to leave too early

[Captain Red]

Lots of sage advice here. On Aleta we are ruled by the weather. Aleta is a solid blue water boat and we will head out of harbour when many others are happy to stay in. But we look very closely at the forecast before we do.

Granted that more than 3 days offshore means your forecast expires, but that's what satellites, SSBs, and weatherfaxes are for. A modicum of experience with a barometer and cloud forecasting goes a long way, too. At every change of watch we record lat/long and millibars.

Not sailing to other people's schedules, either for guests or rallies, is high on our list. We waited over two weeks with a half dozen like minded boats to cross from Beaufort, NC to St. Thomas a few years ago. Meanwhile the Salty Dawgs and ARC 1500 participants were blown all over the place that year. Many putting into Bermuda for repairs.

Everyone's appetite for risk is different. I met a cruiser that sailed with a storm for a week rather than heave to for 24 hours. He blamed his weather routers for his miserable experience. Perhaps. But knowing what to do in bad weather will also vastly improve your fun quotient.

In short, after nearly 20,000 miles we do our best to go with the flow and make the most of wherever we are. Your mileage will vary.

[barcoMeCasa]

Originally Posted by dustman

For those of you who have sailed around the world or have extensive sailing experience; what percentage of your total traveling time is spent waiting for good weather windows?

No idea 😊

The wait is as long as it makes sense to be there & then, on that boat, in that place, on that day/week...

What happened in the past, somewhere else or on someone else's boat really isn't relevant & best ignored imho, might be distracting. Better to just deal with the real world there & then.

Personally as a singlehander it's nice to have couple days good wind forecast to get off the shelf & out of shipping routes. Doesn't always work out that way though

[arcticmonkey]

long as it takes I recon
As my grandmother uses to say... an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

[JPA Cate]

There's another aspect to this issue, because there are times to not wait, but to leave now, as well as to wait. My mother used to say, "Circumstances alter cases."

And an observation, which is that I attribute my background in round the buoys racing and ocean racing, that it is okay to leave into a challenging forecast, but I would have been afraid if I hadn't experienced going out into most everything.

One time, we went as fast as we could to get out to sea before the thunderstorm arrived, because our afternoon departure was designed to bring us overnight to the barred river entrance where we wanted to go, and our arrival time at the river was planned for halfway into the flood. And, we wanted the flood to take us a ways up the river, not anchor just inside the mouth.

Another time, a cyclone was brewing in the Solomon Is., and our visas were up in New Caledonia. (It was going to come towards us, according to the forecasts.) We zipped out of NC and had our fastest ever run in our previous boat, 159-1/2 n. mi/day, getting out of Dodge! [Not bad for a boat with a 29 ft. waterline.] But again, nothing to fear for accepting the challenge.

There are always exceptions. But if someone asked me if it were wise, I'd have to say something like, "if you're not comfortable with it, don't do it." And I wouldn't recommend it for someone with no experience at all, too much chance for things to get all messed up. We thought we could handle it.

Of course, we also thought we could handle most things by then (lots of experience and ocean miles), but we found our dismasting between Sydney and Brisbane on the way to New Caledonia (unpredicted low developed) expensive, and it was demoralizing to me. It did not affect Jim that way, having been dismasted before, he knew what awaited him. Forecasting is better now, and we learned to look at at least two different models, and if they don't agree, might wait till they do.

Ann

[dustman]

Thank you all for the amazing responses and insights.



The reason for my question was to get a more general sense of how much extra time over the expected circumnavigation times to allow for.



The planned route would be leaving in March to Baja Mexico>Marquesas>Tuamotus>Society Islands>American Samoa>Tonga>Fijian Islands>Vanuatu>Australia>Cocos Keeling>Madagascar>Durban>Hopping down the coast to Cape Town>St Helena>Cape Verde>Azores>Mediterranean>Italy>Greece>Hang out there til spring and back out for the Atlantic crossing to maybe Barbados and hop back up to the Caribbean/Bahamas.


I'd love to take the Red Sea route but sounds pretty dangerous.


I foresee a lot of waiting getting around South Africa.



I'm basing my routing and timing on World Cruising Routes, and a lot of time spent on Windy.com over the past couple years.

[jipcho]

Originally Posted by wholybee

For me it wasn't much. Typically you might wait a week before leaving a port. Often only a couple days. I would ( long before I was ready to leave) plan a departure window of a week and almost always get to leave sometime in that window. During that time, I am still out doing stuff, not purely "waiting."
The only notable place this didn't happen was between Richard's Bay and Cape Town. I was in Richards Bay a full month, then had a window not long enough to make it to Cape Town, and stopped 2 more times on the way there.

Wholybee, I had the same experience. Other than avoiding cyclone seasons, the run down the "Wild Coast" from Richards Bay to Cape Town is an area where weather windows need to be taken seriously. A friend of mine lost his vessel and needed to be plucked from the ocean by an NSRA helicopter because he took a chance. With few safe anchorages along a coast hundreds of miles long, sailing with a strong current and winds that if they are opposed to the current, are life threatening, there's no room for error. When I left Richards Bay, I had run out of visa extensions, and so had no choice but to leave South Africa during the winter, which nobody in their right mind does. My longest wait for a weather window was 2 lovely weeks in Mossel Bay, before sailing solo past the potentially most dangerous stretch, Cape Agulhas, after getting the go-ahead from the South African Mobile Maritime Network during one of my daily Ham radio chats with them.