{"id":2273,"date":"2008-07-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=2273"},"modified":"2009-04-15T08:51:51","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T13:51:51","slug":"s_logs-dashew-dashew522","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/s_logs-dashew-dashew522\/","title":{"rendered":"The Waiting Game"},"content":{"rendered":"
Weather Watch: A long wait for the optimal conditions to make the passage to Greenland.<\/div>\n

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We’ve been enjoying Labrador, but consider it an appetizer, increasing our desire to get to Greenland. Labrador has given us a chance to "practice" with ice bergs and their smaller offspring, get accustomed to using our SONAR for navigation in cold water (it works much better in cold, dense mediums), and attempt to become familiar with the weather patterns in this part of the world.<\/p>\n

We are used to being able to quickly come to grips with the weather, find what we need in short order, and be off. We are not finding things so easy for this short passage.<\/p>\n

The key is visibility for bergy bits, the small offspring of icebergs. These lie mostly sunken, and are not easy to pick out. But they are big enough to do substantial damage to props, or worse. Our major concern is with too much wind and white caps. The white caps look a lot like small pieces of ice. We also need some degree of atmospheric clarity – at least half a mile at sea level.<\/p>\n

As we have mentioned before, what we are looking for is a weak high pressure system. This will generate clear air. But if it is a strong high, with more than 17 knots of wind, the white caps will hide things we’d like to see. Southerly quadrant winds typically bring lower visibility, but we would trade some of this lowered visibility for lighter winds.<\/p>\n

The weather hereabouts is influenced by a variety of factors with which we are not familiar. Between the higher latitude, proximity to the polar weather generators, and compressed topography with Greenland, it is hard for amateurs and professionals alike to figure accurately. The weather models also tend to diverge more than we are used to.<\/p>\n

While on the boat, without wifi, we are limited to the NOAA Marine Prediction Center weather faxes received via radio, and GFS or NGPS weather models which we get on Sailmail (Sailmail is working great this cruising cycle).<\/p>\n

The past week has seen some lovely weather on the Labrador side of the pond, but gales around Southern Greenland.<\/p>\n

To help us figure out when to depart we have asked Rick Shema (www.weatherguy.com) to assist us in picking a departure date.<\/p>\n

To recap, the parameters from our perspective are:<\/p>\n