The clicking sound in the background is four of the tailenders in the SHTP putting on their left turn blinkers.
Up head, the breeze is going light for anyone above 32 degrees N. latitude. And doesn't look to refill with any consistency until Saturday afternoon, 48 hours from now. Further south, it's a three boat race between CATO, VENTUS, and DOMINO. DOMINO is almost out of bounds, driving over the shoulder and into the left rough, sailing significantly more miles in search of the popcorn clouds and 20 knots of tradewinds further south. Can DOMINO parlay the extra distance into extra breeze?
Hmmm. I've been mentoring one of this year's Bugliters for some months. When he told me his routing program suggested a northerly course, north of the Great Circle, I spilled my coffee on my keyboard. I certainly see value in the arrows and nice highways of GRIB charts and routing programs. But weather routing for a Transpac thankfully remains as much art as science.
I like to visualize Eastern and Central Pacific weather patterns using good, old fashioned weather fax, something that's been around since WW II when the maps were sent in code. I'm so old, I remember sitting at Transpac nav stations, writing down, then deciphering the 5 digit codes, then hand drawing the weather charts that were in turn hand drawn by some weatherman on shore. It was a 45 minute job to collect and draw one chart
Now days its easier than ever. The weather fax charts are continuously available. Some are helpful for the SHTP. Some, like for the Western Pacific, or ice limits, are just of interest.
http://www.opc.ncep.noaa.gov/shtml/P_brief.shtml
The real time weather fax chart I call the "Anal." Actually, it's the "Pacific Surface Analysis," usually 3-6 hours old upon receipt. Then there's the 24, 48, and 96 hour charts. All those lines are isobars, lines of equal barometric pressure. The closer the isobars, the more the wind.
The rule of thumb for a Tranpac used to be follow the 1020 isobar. Back in the day, calibrating a barometer was tricky business, and I'd have to make a special trip to LAX or SFO airport, barometer in hand, to divine the local reading. The internet has changed all that.
What the internet hasn't changed is figuring out the weather beyond 4-5 days. GRIB pretends it knows, and often it's right. But there's few ships or buoys in the Pacific that give accurate reports. Garbage in, garbage out. And the ever-changing perimeter of the Pacific High is like jello. Now it's here, now it's there.
In our current case, the 2016 SHTP, a direct course from south of the Farallones to "Pt. A" at 32N x 130W might have been a better look than sudsing along to 35N x 130, some 180 miles north. I sponged up the spilled coffee and suggested considering that option to my friend before the start last Saturday.
We'll see what happens in the next 24.
