Sally, Cyclizine and Weather Routing
Something remarkable has happened. It’s been 12,000 nautical miles since Sally, clammy and green with sea-sickness, lurched to towards the leeward rail before slumping back to her berth longing to be out of the Cabot Strait’s choppy seas. Making a dash from Burgeo to Braddeck was a mistake and we should have waited for more favourable conditions. It’s a mistake I’m not allowed to forget.
Avoiding pitching into steep, choppy seas has been the guiding principle of Shimshal’s voyages ever since for it is the slamming and the ‘g’ forces that are sure to induce a recurrence of her lifelong affliction. It’s more than my life’s worth to contemplate a repeat of the Minch and the Cabot Strait!
So how, in 12,000 miles, have we kept Sally smiling and enjoying offshore passage making?
First up for special mention is Alex, an excellent Physician Associate and a former employee of mine. Alex once prescribed Sally cyclizine for Benign Positional Vertigo which worked better than the Epley Manoeuvre. Luckily Sally is able to take this with impunity. Immediately traditional sea sickness remedies, loaded with anticholinergic side effects, were consigned to the dustbin. When at sea she pops a cyclizine every eight hours whatever the weather and this has had a huge effect on our cruising. Thank you Alex.
Next up for praise is PredictWind which is an incredible piece of software that demystifies weather forecasting. There’s no pretending to understand 500 millibar charts and occluded fronts. Instead, PredictWind dumps vast amounts of data from all the major weather models onto a massive server and works out winds, waves, currents, rain and cloud for every hour of your planned 10 day voyage (knowing both your intended route and the performance of your boat in the forecast conditions). Having churned the data it reports it to your iPhone in a beautifully presented and easily understood fashion. It even looks back over recent weeks to advise which model has been most accurate. Only once in the last 9,000 miles has PredictWind got it significantly wrong - but happily Sally’s stomach survived unscathed.
Our third line of defence has been to employ weather routers to look over our shoulders and receive the blame should Sally’s nemesis reappear! That’s not always worked well as the router we used for the Davis Strait didn’t understand the ice charts which caused some consternation. Maik in Iceland, however, saved our bacon when we exited Scoresby Sund in Greenland when he saw one of those mega systems brewing in the Denmark Strait.
For the whole of North America, including the Cabot strait, we did without a router and trade wind sailing between Panama and French Polynesia is pretty simple. But, for the ‘Difficult Middle’ and onto New Zealand we invested in the services of John Martin of Ocean Tactics. John has been sending us daily routing advice throughout this year’s voyage and has kept us out of trouble and Sally sickness free. Having made the same passage 40 times in a similar boat, John is well placed to understand the consequences of squeezed isobars and approaching fronts on sea state and comfort.
It all worked well and ‘Cyclizine Sally’ is so buoyed up by the adventure she is even contemplating further ocean voyages once we have had our fill of New Zealand. Thank you Alex, thank you PrefictWind and thank you John for keeping us safe and sick-free!