"we have had a few marine "bombs" drop on us, where hurricane force winds rapidly developed from a small craft warning. I've been caught in a few of those situations over the year's (the more time you spend on the water, the greater the chance of "ship happening"), and it is worse than being a victim of over-predicting, where you sat on the beach unnecessarily." said Doug Once I was on Puget sound on a summer day when the morning marine forecast had been for 10-15 knots. In the late afternoon the north wind died away to a flat calm. Then a little south breeze came up. In less than an hour it was blowing a solid 40 knots (as measured downwind in Everett WA). This very strong wind blew for hours, until long after dark. The wind was against the tide and very steep waves built up much faster than they do on the fetch/wind speed graphs that you find in books. Ever since then I always carry more in the way of safety gear (and especially warm clothes) than I previously thought necessary in summertime. Even if you only go out when the weather report is nice you will eventually be surprised. Even if you can avoid rolling in 4 to 6 foot breaking seas, you will be soaked through in no time in 40 knot winds. I think that the fact that predicted wind speeds often seem high is partly due to the ability of recording anemometers to record the highest gusts. On a given day it may only blow 20 knots in ocaisional gusts. These gusts might be too brief to influence the sea state, but they will be recorded as the high end for the days wind range. Nick Lyle *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Aug 31 1999 - 00:42:34 PDT
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