Weather Communications & Navigation

Weather, Communications & Navigation:

On passage from the Azores to the UK & Northern Europe

These are a collection of notes and recommendations resulting from our one passage from Horta to the South Coast of England. While they are based on very limited experience, they also reflect the advice and coaching we received from a variety of Northern European cruising sailors, so I believe they are worth passing along.

If you plan to follow the more popular routing from the Azores to the Atlantic Coast of Spain or Portugal – or to Gib and entry into the Med – you will find that some of these comments still apply.

Enroute Weather Advisories:

Here are the main weather sources we used on this routing. They all require SSB Radio (except Navtex) and a good antenna installation as the signals can be quite weak at times. With the exception of some of the Wx Fax transmissions during peak propagation periods, I would guess that receiving any of these with a small SSB receiver (e.g. Grundig Yachtboy, Sony 2010, etc.) will prove to be difficult and the comments of a few other boats so equipped bears this out.

Wx Product	F’cast Time Period	Station or Freq(s)	Comments
All Wx Fax Products: Surf Analysis & F’cast, Wind & Wave, F’casts, 500MB, etc.	Issued 0000 & 1200 GMT, effective for time/date given on the chart	Boston NMF Northwood GYA Offenbach (German)	See current NMF Sked + REEDS for freqs, times and product selection
Area Forecasts, Radio France Int’natl (RFI)	As of 1200 GMT for subsequent 36 Hrs	UK Maritime Mobile Net (14.303 USB, 0800 GMT)	This is a ham net; see REEDS for RFI f’cast areas
Area Forecasts, UK & Adjacent Seas (referred to as the BBC Shipping F’cast)	Issued 0100 & 1300 GMT for subsequent 24-36 Hrs	198 kHz AM; also available from UK MM Net (14.303 USB, 0800 & 1800 GMT)	0435, 1101, 1654 & 2348 GMT on 198; hard to pick up until near UK; see REEDS for BBC f’cast areas
Southbound II Herb Hilgenberg Toronto, Canada	3-4 Days	12.359 USB; Roll call begins 1930 GMT, Net begins 2000	Propagation opens for this area 2100-2130 GMT
Winlink’s Catalog Files	Same as RFI, BBC and NWS WxFax Products	PMBO PA3DUV usually best connection; also used DA5UAW, IV3HXR, OE4XBU, SM6USU; W10N & VE2AFQ initially workable	Review your catalog; FQNT52 (RFI) & FPUK71 (BBC) area f’casts plus NWS products you don’t receive via Wx Fax
Navtex Broadcasts	Broadcast every 4 Hrs for 24 Hr Period	518 kHz (English) 490 kHz (in language suitable to local waters)	Medium Range (200-500 NM; varies); offers variety of navigation, wx info

Additional comments re: Table above:

1. If this list initially looks confusing and a bit of a mystery, please understand that much of it will already be familiar to you by the time you’ve navigated your way to the Azores. Nevertheless, as you move East and ‘fall off’ many of the U.S. National Weather Service (NWS) marine forecast products – many end at 045W - you will inevitably begin to search for other products relevant to your intended route, whether North or further East. The above table is offered up with this in mind.

2. There are a variety of other weather forecast sources available (e.g. from Spain, Portugal, France, Denmark, etc.) although they may be more difficult to access due to propagation, language of the product, etc.

3. The European Macmillan REEDS (see further on) is an invaluable reference for much more information on European weather products

4. Winlink users often don’t bother downloading Wx Fax transmissions from shore stations like NMF Boston because they can pick up most of these files in digital quality using the Airmail catalog. But before reaching the Azores, you’ll begin to find propagation and packet speeds diminishing rapidly, making the downloading of those larger files difficult and tedious. We found that downloading a block of Wx Fax charts from Boston and later Northwood to be more efficient re: time and electrical drain, and also less tedious. The odd transmission times of Wx Fax products aren’t a problem while underway, as a crew member is always on watch. (Northwood’s products require more interpretation by the user than the U.S. NWS products; you’ll find a bit of upfront research on how to use them to be quite helpful before you put to sea. The same is true for the Offenbach products). As you close on the European coast, the European PMBOs will become more accessible and downloading Catalog files will again become more manageable.

5. The UK Maritime Mobile Net hosted by Bill G4FRN is a ham net, just like Trudy 8P6QM’s TransAtlantic Net (21.400 USB at 1300 GMT) which you may have used earlier in your crossing. RFI and BBC area forecasts are provided to callers and you may find relevant forecast information even if you can only listen. RFI’s areas were recently redefined, so be sure you have the current (2003) boundaries for RFI’s forecast areas (see e.g. REEDS). You will lose the UK MM Net when closing on the English Channel due to its longer skip pattern. However, you will hopefully by then begin receiving the BBC directly on 198 kHz.

6. You will undoubtedly be very familiar with Herb’s (Southbound II) service by the time you leave the Azores, but reception will prove increasingly difficult in the Eastern Atlantic and as you near the English Channel. Plan to be patient and allow propagation to open up and work for you. Herb often stands by for extended listening periods during this otherwise less busy season for just this reason. It repeatedly amazed me how Herb could pass a forecast successfully despite marginal propagation and a very weak contact.

7. Those of us from North America usually aren’t familiar with Navtex, even though it’s available in our home waters. It’s used throughout Europe and normally is accessed using a dedicated receiver. More recently, a second frequency (490 kHz) has been introduced to provide inshore/local forecasts in the language of the home waters. For those with a TNC (SSB ‘modem’), you can receive Navtex transmissions by offsetting your receive frequency up 1.3 kHz, selecting LSB mode and using JVComm or Get Fax software (the latter available from www.airmail2000.com, see Mad Science Projects). You would select the Navtex Mode within Get Fax with the radio set up as described above; it will pick up the next Navtex broadcast. However, Get Fax and a SCS-type TNC are reported to copy Navtex transmissions for only so long before slipping off into gibberish for a period. For this reason as well as all the features available in a dedicated receiver (always on, minimal battery drain, large non-volatile memory, dual frequency scanning, etc.) using a Navtex receiver is the easier, more reliable method if you can spring for the hardware.

Using Weather Products:

As you collect a mix of weather-related products, you’ll see they can sometimes differ from one another significantly for the area you happen to be interested in. It was always hard for me to determine who was more accurate within a given forecast period, and all of the sources (even Herb…) were significantly wide of the mark at times. However, you benefit in two ways when receiving a mix of products: 1) when they all agree, you know the likely accuracy of the forecast is quite high, and 2) if they do vary, the more pessimistic of the forecasts helps you anticipate bad weather you might not otherwise be aware of, if in fact it should arrive.

Plotting Weather Forecasts: We photocopied a section of a small scale chart to make up a laminated chartlet of a large area (we had one to cover the U.S. – Azores leg, another for the Azores – English Channel run) and we used these along with a china marker (grease pencil). We drew in the RFI and BBC area boundaries on the chartlet before laminating. We would pencil in the verbal forecast info we receive (e.g. RFI’s or BBC’s area forecasts plus Herb’s forecast) and could then refer to them over the next time period before easily wiping clear and rewriting, as required. We don’t have a place to permanently mount and use a printer, and so the Wx Fax charts we received were only available on the laptop screen. This was not an ideal arrangement and it would have been more helpful to put printed products on a clipboard for later review in conjunction with the area forecasts. Using printed-up Wx Fax charts also allows you to more easily flip from 96 Hr Prog to 48 Hr Prog to current Surface Analysis charts, noting how the forecast changes over time. This is not only helpful but also accelerates the learning curve.

SSB and Other Communication:

HF Comms: As you move eastward from west of the Azores, you will lose access to most of the U.S. Nets you may have been using. Working a schedule with folks back in North America is still possible but times and band selection become more important for success. And since these passages are usually made in Summer, propagation can all by itself make things challenging. Once you arrive in the Azores, you’re likely to find the marina environments you are frequently settled into will generate additional hash and interference. Winlink users will begin checking with each other to determine if everyone else is having the same problems they are in download speeds and, in fact, connecting at all with past PMBO favorites. Overall, past practices in HF communication will need to be re-examined and new plans made for staying in touch with old friends and beginning to use new sources of weather and cruising-related information. And as with everywhere else yachties congregate, as conditions become more trying, cooperation and good radio habits become increasingly needed…but regrettably, less evident. Let’s all try to break this pattern and exhibit a maximum of consideration for others.

Satellite Phones: One tool we saw being used far more than in the Caribbean or North America was the sat phone. Even on the smallest and simplest of boats, we would see one of the crew sitting in the cockpit using e.g. their Iridium handheld. More than one boat we met in the Azores would be absent a SSB radio but would routinely call ‘home’ and have updated weather information relayed to them by a trusted family member or friend, both to help sort out a weather window for departure AND for weather routing once offshore. This approach requires one to be dependent on a daisy chain of variables but the connection itself isn’t likely to be one of them. Sat phones also came in handy for boats with equipment failures enroute, as they arranged for parts to be shipped ahead and/or sought repair advice while at sea. (Winlink, Sailmail and commercial HF email users enjoy some of these same benefits via email). Sat phones are not a replacement for SSB but they do offer some unique and functional capabilities. The tenuous financial nature of the existing Sat Comm businesses remains a problem for any potential customer; who will be in business a year from now remains somewhat uncertain. However, in the Spring/Summer of 2003, we didn’t hear a single complaint from an Iridium customer related to the system’s performance. Typical costs (especially from those who purchased a phone in Trinidad) were $500+ for the basic handset and $1+ U.S. per minute for air time.

Finally, a word about Pocketmail: This ubiquitous, cheap email system remains a yachtie favorite in the Azores and beyond, we found. For some reason, long distance calls using a phone card were quite inexpensive in the Azores (at least, after hours and on weekends) and so Pocketmail remained a viable tool, economically speaking. We are told that Pocketmail also offers free access numbers in Europe now (e.g. they now offer a 0800 number in the UK), which adds to its cost effectiveness. Of course, when you’re well offshore or anchored out in the midst of a downpour, its only use is in composing email for later uploading.

Navigation Pubs & Charts:

General Approach: Given that you’ll probably be making at least some initial purchases of Atlantic Islands and European charts & pubs while still in North America and will also likely be working with finite cruising funds, the two basic challenges you face are a) what do you buy for best value, and b) from whom do you buy it. And you fundamentally have two choices: Put yourselves in the hands of an expert chart agent or research and shop directly with publishers by virtue of your own wits.

We chose the latter approach simply because the only chart agents with whom we had previous experience – Blue Water Books in Ft. Lauderdale, FL and Bellingham Chart Printers in Bellingham, WA – both charged more than our budget would allow for most European products. (We’d had good service from both when in the Caribbean, but in truth I also think it’s unreasonable to expect they will have the same level of expertise and offer the same variety in European chart & guide products as their European competitors). Our plan was to purchase an initial selection of guides and charts to accomplish the following:

Provide safe enroute and island navigation across the Atlantic
Provide for a safe arrival in a port of entry on England’s South Coast (Falmouth, Plymouth, Portsmouth), and
Provide ‘bail out’ charts and harbor information for arrival on the Atlantic Coast of Spain or Portugal, if weather systems prevented us reaching the UK (which does happen on occasion)

We reasoned that once we arrived in England, any further purchases would be less expensive, include a greater variety of choices, and perhaps be more up-to-date. As it turned out, this approach worked well for us and we have no major regrets about using it…although using a reliable UK chart agent from the outset would have been a better solution had we known of one.

We also quickly learned that a major cost factor in the pricing of European products is the cost of air freight, whether you pay for it direct when ordering from abroad or pay for it indirectly when purchasing products from a U.S.-based chart agent. So beginning our research early on and allowing sufficient time for the 4-6 week period required for surface shipment delivery paid large dividends.

Chart Agents: There is much to recommend working with a chart agent, and especially so when s/he is located in the UK. If the agent carries a wide array of products and is an active sailor as well, you can benefit from their own experience in evaluating the wide range of choices in guides and charts. You’ll notice this is different than working with individual publishers as for example when I ordered some products directly from Imray in the UK. I benefited from no comparative or evaluative information, no matter how subjective it might have been; my choices were only from that which Imray published.

Although I’m normally reluctant to readily recommend specific vendors – and especially so when my history with them is brief – I will mention that I found exemplary service to be available from Marine Instruments, the Falmouth chart agent from whom I subsequently purchased charts and guides after arriving in England (their full address is Marine Instruments, The Wheelhouse, Upton Slip, Falmouth, Cornwall TR11 3DQ; email: info@marineinstruments.co.uk; 44 1326 312 414 from North America; Alastair Heane, Commercial Manager). Alastair provides counseling to yachts all over the world, if the large stack of outbound packages I saw each day awaiting pick-up are a good indication, and his knowledge of local waters in & near the Channel seemed quite impressive. If using a resource like Marine Instruments, it seems to me the North American sailor receives the following benefits:

Competitive, local pricing that is far less than what the American vendors charge
Comparative evaluation of the widest array of competing products
Inexpensive shipping costs, if allowing lead time for surface shipping
Follow-up support via email or phone, either before departure or enroute

Specific Pub Recommendations: While our experience is limited, here are my ‘For What It’s Worth’ recommendations for charts & guides when crossing via Bermuda and the Azores, sufficient I believe to provide a safe landfall on the Atlantic Coast of Europe and/or UK.

Overall Best Reference: Macmillan REEDS Nautical Almanac, annual edition for year you will be arriving in Europe. Many, many European sailors recommended this to us while still in Horta and the initial chapters on tides, navigation buoyage, weather skeds, VTS procedures and harbor information is astounding and very helpful. If you’re thinking of the Reed’s Almanac you see at West Marine in the States, forget it – this is a killer pub that provides harbor charts plus all relevant port information for all European Atlantic ports from Denmark to Gib plus all the UK and Ireland…and offers an immense amount of information we don’t normally see in a single pub in North America. It seems to provide the single best ‘study guide’ for North American sailors trying to familiarize themselves with all that’s unique and challenging about European waters. (You will find this available at MAYS in Horta, Faial, Azores but will pay an astounding price premium for it there. Better to pick it from a UK source early in the year you are planning to depart North America).

Guides for the Atlantic Crossing:

· Atlantic Crossing Guide by Hammick (RCC Foundation) – our copy, the latest edition in early 2003, was terribly dated; I understand a new edition is out Summer, 2003 by a different author. This is useful in developing an overall perspective on Atlantic routing, weather, etc.; however, the routing advice to the UK in our issue didn’t conform with the general notion to stay initially well west of the rhumb line so as not to find oneself embayed by storms in Biscay.

· Atlantic Islands by Hammick (RCC Foundation) – more current and generally quite helpful, altho’ the many EU-supported changes in the Azores in just the few years since the last edition was printed are striking and make its information selectively dated re: marinas, yacht services, general island economic health, emigration trends, etc.; I’d also caution readers against following this pub’s overly cautious routing recommendation to the UK from the Azores as it takes one very far north without hardly any Easting, extending the trip unnecessarily. (Perhaps the newest edition of the Atlantic Crossing Guide will get it right…?)

· Shell Channel Pilot by Cunliffe (Imray) – coverage of the entire English South Coast, Scillies & Channel Is. and the adjacent North French coast; ends at Ramsgate on the English side, just south of the Thames Estuary; much of the port and coastal pilot information can also be found in REEDS but in a more abbreviated form

· Atlantic Spain & Portugal by Robinson/Hammick (RCC Foundation) – a bail-out reference we carried but which wasn’t really needed given the ‘Atlantic Ports’ section of the Atlantic Crossing Guide coupled with current charts for selected, all-weather ports. We purchased it because we hope to use it when heading for the Med from Northern Europe.

General Reading:

· I found the Mediterranean Cruising Handbook by Heikell (Imray) to be a good general introduction to the Med, but I could not find a similar overview source for cruising Northern Europe.

· As when cruising throughout the Caribbean, we purchased a range of Lonely Planet Guides from Amazon and many a long passage day was spent plowing through the England, Europe and London guides. While these will prove especially valuable now that we’re in the UK, the amount of increased anticipaton, general motivation and crew morale they generated while on passage was – for us – worth the cost alone. In general, these seem to us to provide tremendous value and tend to counterbalance the coastal orientation of marine cruising guides.

Charts for the Atlantic Crossing, Azores and landfall in Europe:

· We have used the reprinted chart folios available from Bellingham Chart Printers (www.tidesend.com) numerous times and think they represent good value. Unlike copying charts from friends (which is certainly cheaper), copy quality from Bellingham is excellent, the most current version of the chart is guaranteed, and the charts are conveniently bound but can be broken out individually as the passage requires them. They can be ordered in 2/3 size (more workable for nav stations like we have on WHOOSH) or full-size. Bellingham’s reprinted charts are usually NOAA and NIMA copies and proved more than adequate for landfall navigation in Bermuda, the Azores and England’s South Coast; they were also quite adequate for safe navigation within the Bermuda & Azores islands.

· Once we began navigating in UK waters, we found the British Admiralty’s “Leisure Folio’ series of charts – somewhat like Maptech’s ‘Chart Kits’ we’ve all used for U.S. waters - were conveniently sized, economical, reprinted annually, and overall to be a big improvement over NIMA charts of these waters (which after all are not intended for small craft navigation up the rivers and creeks of the English coast!)

· Imray charts are on heavier ‘waterproof’ paper and, as we found in the Caribbean, seem too large & cumbersome, pricey and hard to work on with pencil. I’m sure it’s just a ‘personal preference’ thing, but I still don’t understand why one would prefer this type of chart when working at a cruising yacht’s chart table.

· We’ve seen a number of electronic charting systems’ on-screen displays as we visited boats in the Azores and most lacked abundant (and also current) detail of the harbors. However, this matters little in reality and all of them were reportedly very accurate. And as in the Caribbean – whether for better or worse – intense swapping and copying of charts, both electronic and printed, occurs between many boats.

Buoys & Marks: A word or two about navigation buoyage, as there are some distinct differences from U.S., Canadian and Caribbean home waters. A thorough review in one of the guides such as REED’s would be prudent before entering UK/Northern Europe waters but here’s a short summary of the changes in buoys and marks a North American sailor can expect to encounter here:

· The system in use is the IALA System A unless otherwise noted

· Red cans with square red topmarks and red lights are left to port when proceeding in the direction of the main Flood stream

· Green or black conical buoys with triangular topmarks and green lights are left to starboard, also as related to the direction of the main Flood stream

· Channel and navigational buoys frequently have their own individual names now vs. the sequential numbers we see in North America

· Cardinal marks (related to the N, S E or W compass points) are placed relative to hazards so you can locate the hazard’s location relative to the marks

· Two other new types of marks (isolated dangers, indicated by black double spheres, and special marks, indicated by yellow buoys often with a yellow X topmark) are commonly used

Tides: Just as when cruising in the Canadian provinces or the Carolinas, tidal flow plays a BIG role in navigational planning. There are really two related but separate issues you want to consider, both covered in complete and clear detail in one section of REEDS:

- Tidal height for a given dock, anchorage and/or river bar; in these cases, you are using the Reference Station tide table, corrected for the harbor in which you are interested, to understand the timing of the tide and its range; Neaps & Springs tides can be significantly different from one another, making a given anchorage inviting at some times but marginal or unavailable otherwise

- Tidal streams or the flow of water along the coastline or within the Channel that will aid or impede your progress; to understand tidal streams, you will be working off the Dover tide table, the default reference station, in conjunction with hourly tidal stream chartlets for the area you are navigating

Both these areas will end up being second nature to you after a short while, but a good review (again, as found in REEDS) will lend self-confidence to your navigation when you first arrive.

A Final Comment: For my fellow American sailors, perhaps I'd be allowed to add a note about geographical terminology here, as we tend to use these terms interchangeably in the U.S. while in fact they are quite distinct. Best not to offend by brushing up a bit on the following:

· England - solely England and no other UK entity; someone who is ‘English’ is specifically from England

· Scotland and Wales – peer entities to England, each with their own cultural identity and local governmental autonomy; a Welshman or Scotsman is distinctly that and not “English” in any sense

· Britain - refers to the entire main island and includes Wales, Scotland and England; the ‘British Parliament’ does indeed govern, in a federal sense, on behalf of all these entities; the English may well consider themselves to be British but I gather that the Scottish and Welsh feel this term is less suitable

· United Kingdom - meant to include all of Britain plus Northern Ireland but not Ireland, which is a separate governmental entity, country and EU member.

WHOOSH, currently lying Plymouth, South Devon