Tagged: fog
Plotting
It’s summertime, and the water temperature is moderate and the ambient temperature is hot. Together, the temps support fun boating days and boaters are headed out to familiar locations and new ones. A word to the wise, regardless of how sure you are of the area to be traversed, consider checking over the charts for possible issues and plotting your main routes. Even if you’ve gone over the same route countless times, fog can appear out of nowhere, fully obscuring recognized landmarks. And wind and wave conditions can cause you to take new routes with new obstacles, often time [...]
Plan for the Best…
Most boaters would agree that boating is typically an adventure. Weather plays a large role in the experience, as the sun, wind, rain, and fog work in concert to create unexpected results. This afternoon, as I left the harbor, there was a light chop, a slight breeze, and excellent multi-mile visibility. Based on the favorable conditions, I went for a brief ride to an adjacent town. After briefly touring the harbor I started my trip to my home port, just a few miles away. As I exited the harbor, I could see the visibility was worsening quickly as a [...]
Down East Conditions
Yesterday, as I cleared the Blyman Bridge in Gloucester Harbor, I noticed a slight wisp of fog over Eastern Point. The weather was sunny and cool, and the fog seemed out of place, so I made a mental note to keep an eye on it and headed towards the Harbor mouth. Much to my surprise, within five minutes of the sighting, I was completely enveloped in a fog bank that reduced visibility from a couple miles to a couple hundred feet. Almost all visible landmarks disappeared, and only the nearby rocks and an occasional house silhouette were partially visible. Needless [...]
Squall Lines
I was talking to a boating buddy yesterday about an upcoming TV show and our conversation, unexpectedly landed on the topic of Weather. Recently, I shared an incident of fast moving fog that reduced conditions from 2 miles visibility to less than ¼ mile well inside of ten minutes. In our discussion, we focused on storms, summer and winter alike. A point, reinforced by the fog experience, was the speed at which conditions can change. Like the fog, a squall or other aggressive wind storm can arise with little warning and can cause significant harm to the boaters and the [...]
Low Visibility
Earlier today I enjoyed lunch with an old boating buddy of mine. Naturally, we covered a lot of boating topics, from repowering to fireworks display viewing experiences. I was fortunate in that, on July 3rd, the bad weather cleared during the late afternoon, and stayed that way, for the evening display., resulting in good night-time visibility. On the other hand, he was unfortunate in that the weather, specifically fog, became progressively thicker during the July 4th display creating poor visibility to return home in. Being an experienced boatman, he used his limited electronics and charts to pick up the main [...]
Smart Boating 245 – Weather
This show illuminates weather fundamentals including basic cloud groups and wind patterns, and conditions such as thunderstorms, tropical storms and fog.