Wednesday, October 11, 2017

Downtown Hampton Public Piers - at a dock

Note the position of the fenders, the marina only has 1/2 length finger docks.
The forecast for the Chesapeake was for 5 to 10 kt winds and 1 ft waves according to the NOAA coastal forecast. It was wrong! When we left Fishing Bay we saw 16 to 18 kts with higher gusts. In comparing forecasts for the bay, the only app that was accurate was PredictWind.  It was developed by New Zealand for the America's Cup races. It is one of the few apps that provides predictions from both the GPS (US) and ECMWF (Euro) models so you can compare the two predictions for future weather. The PredictWind app was accurate when all the other apps and weather services were wrong (they predicted much less wind). I will be using the app more in the future.

The ride today was terrible with the high winds and short-period waves hitting the boat from the side. Nevertheless, we are now in Hampton where for the next few days the Snowbird Rendezvous takes place with seminars on traveling the ICW. It a very popular series of seminars and it's followed by the participants heading south as a group.

It's fender to fender here at the marina for the seminars on the ICW
Ann hosted a dinner tonight for Gordon and Eta Johnson along with John Kwak and Julia. It was a great time talking of all things nautical. We intend taking a break Thursday and only travel about 23 Nm to the free dock after the Great Bridge. 

1 comments:

Dawn R said...

Bob- the weather has been quite the challenge this year. We are held up in the Solomon's waiting for things to settled down a bit. We found https://buoybay.noaa.gov/locations to be helpful, it gives you real time data on everything you'd want to know on what's happened in the bay. NOAA also has data bouys along NJ coast but they dont give nearly as much information as these.