In this course you can learn about the mechanics of global weather, the foundations of ocean meteorology, predictive modeling and how sailors receive data via satellite and use high-performance navigation software. This course looks at oceanic meteorology and climatology through the lens of the sport of sailing. You will gain a basic knowledge of meteorology needed by sailors to take part in a regatta such as the Barcelona World Race, the only double-handed, round the world regatta with no stops. You will learn about the strategies employed during a round the world regatta and how these are put to use on board the latest ocean racing yachts.
Video 3.3.2 Onboard weather routing
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來自 Universitat de Barcelona 的課程
Strategies for winning. Meteorology in a round the world regatta
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從本節課中
The sailor as meteorologist
In this module you will learn how sailors use meteorology to sail around the world and to win round the world regattas.
All of their interest is focussed on the wind and they need theoretical, but above all practical, knowledge to help them to take the correct decisions at sea.
Remember you can access to the help forum.
If you are experiencing difficulty learning or accessing course content, or if you simply want more information.
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Tomàs Molina
[MUSIC]
So now let's see how this works in daily routine.
Lets try to get a connection.
I mean, at home you're connected all the time.
On your mobile phone, you're connected all the time.
Here, it's quite different.
So, first of all, I started this up.
You have to wait for about five minutes to warm up and initialize and
all that sort of stuff.
Once I'm there, I can, I have to start up another application.
All right, so starting up application.
Now it's looking for a terminal.
If you're lucky, you'll a terminal, of course.
Okay, the terminal is found.
It's looking if it's got a good signal, if we can make a connection.
And once we're there, we're waiting now.
This button here that we can connect.
You have to be very careful connecting because not a big
difference with being at home or in normal offices, it's extremely expensive.
All right?
Downloading one megabyte of data, one megabyte which is nothing.
I mean, people download video clips from YouTube which are hundreds of megabytes.
One megabyte of data is about ten U.S.
dollars, so that's about seven and a half euros per megabyte.
So, just that the navigator will also have to keep that in mind, that he can't just
keep the connection going because he will run up an astronomical bill.
So anyway, I make the connection now.
As you see, this is not quick.
It takes time.
Meanwhile, you have to imagine that all this is moving.
You're at sea. You get a bit dizzy because you're trying
to look at the screen and all that.
If something is happening outside, you have to go outside, disconnect.
Do I want to update?
No, not now.
So, in theory, I have a connection now.
Once the connection is running, it is quite quick.
It is quite quick.
It's like an old ADSL connection, basically.
It's all about getting the connection up and running.
Also, don't forget, all this stuff consumes electricity, right?
The actual satellite terminals consumes quite bit of electricity.
These boats leave with as little fuel as possible.
And the only way make electricity is by
running the engine with the alternator on it.
There is no short power.
So, if they run it too long too often, and they start getting low on fuel,
consuming more fuel than they were expecting, they have another problem.
So there's this constant compromise of electricity.
Try to keep that low because we might run out of fuel.
The actual cost of getting any data, and then the inconvenience of actually
getting a connection, you have to be there, you have to sit here.
Sometimes you'll be sea sick because the boat's moving around so much.
Something's happening on deck, you have to stop again, go outside.
I mean, in one of the earlier occasions we talked about getting as many models as
possible and making as many calculations as possible.
It's expensive,
it's uncomfortable to be here, and it's actually hard work to do that.
It's not sitting on your sofa and just doing this video game.
It is hard work.
Anyway, right now looks like we've got a little weather file.
So now we could launch one of our programs we talked about on other occasions,
ADRENA for instance.
Open up this file, and start doing some weather routing.
So now we have a data connection through the satellite.
I'll get a little file, we're actually in Barcelona now.
So I need to get a file to link it as the starting point.
Get the file, wait.
We can see here that there's progress bar and all of the sudden it goes.
Its typical of a satellite connection.
Sometimes sort of marginal, and then if it's good, it's really good.
Okay, that's done.
And first thing I'm going to do is actually disconnect.
I don't want to spend any more money or spend anymore fuel.
So disconnect.
Disconnecting, blah, blah, blah.
Please wait... Now, I don't want to spend any fuel, either.
So, we're actually going to disconnect on the switchboard.
Okay, now we're really disconnected.
Okay, so not spending any money, not spending any fuel.
So now, I can actually start thinking about, yeah, someone...
Now, I can actually start thinking about doing something with this file I just got.
So, I'm going to open up the application.
We talked about in another subject, ADRENA.
All this time I'm doing now, is trying to get to one simple routing.
Problem is I have to get back on deck to actually helm the boat.
And then, I have to make dinner.
And then I have to try to get some sleep as well.
So it's always a compromise about you have to be quick and efficient and
do as much as possible because there's only that much time left in the day.
Okay, here we go.
Let's have a look here.
Okay, so you see the track of a previous race.
This looks like an ice exclusion zone.
Lots of ice this year, so you can't go very far north.
But anyway, we are here in Barcelona, so I'm going to zoom into that.
It's a little bit messy.
I'm going to make it a simpler chart, so coastline will be enough.
So I can actually see something.
Okay, already a little bit less mess here.
Then I'm going to do same as always.
I'm going to to create waypoint.
I'm going to to create waypoint, let's say here, south of Sardinia.
Create a waypoint here.
Open activators.
And there we go.
Now, so, I'm going to look for my GRIB file now.
GRIB file just downloads with satellites.
It should be this one.
Let's have a look.
This is my GRIB file.
I'll zoom in a little bit, want to make sure we're on course.
There we go.
Now, let's start to do out routing again.
Calculate the routing.
And this time it's easier because there's one thing that's a lot easier here
than in the office.
The program knows where we are, this is connected to a GPS, right?
We're on board a ship now, so you always have your starting position automatically.
I don't like that.
I want to see the overall view, so I'll try this again here, and
just say sensors [INAUDIBLE] on the route, which I prefer.
And now calculate.
At least I can see what's happening here, right?
This is interesting here.
I'm just going to pause this for a second here.
You can see already by the isochrones that it's telling you there's some wind
left here coming out of the Gulf of Valencia, go towards Mallorca.
You can see the isochrones, everywhere I can get, given a period of time.
We're already here, if we take the southerly route.
However, we're already here.
So much closer to the waypoint you want to go to,
the destination, the south of Cerdena.
But I can see here by my eye that there's a lot of
wind coming out the Gulf of Lion here,right?
Which seems to be filling down.
So this could be okay.
So if you do any relatively short planning,
a day or something, it will tell you to go south towards Mallorca, Menorca.
Maybe pass in between the two.
But I can already see coming here,
and you will see this now happening in the routing, that if I start it again, right?
Resume.
Here.
I'll pause it now.
This is where we were.
Pause it now.
And I can already see that these
ones have been really far north are starting to come back here.
Still behind.
But here, the northerly routes all of a sudden start appearing.
Here, the southerly routes are sort of stuffing around in between Minorca and
Mallorca, very little wind there now.
And here, this wind out of the Gulf of Lion has really filled its way down now,
all the way down to Sardinia.
Right?
Once it sort of stayed in the middle, didn't choose left or right.
That's lost as well,
going to start it again, try to finish it.
Look now.
Northerly route is really paying off.
Once in between Mallorca and Menorca, completely behind now.
That downwind, trying to make it to Sardinia.
And I've looked at routes that come out of it.
Short term route?
Blue.
Go between Mallorca and Minorca.
Long term route?
Go up to Rosas, follow the coast.
Go into the Gulf of Lion and go and
find this northwesterly that's going to come out of the Gulf of Lion.
Very, very different.
I mean, this is as extreme as it gets.
Plan for one day, you go there, plan for the other day, you go there.
90 degrees difference.
Imagine that out of a start.
Boats will start here, some boats go directly towards Sardinia.
Other ones go to Rosas to the Spanish French border.
Completely different.
Me, based on this, I would say you definitely have to do that.
Follow the coast and go up.
It can be extremely painful because you like sea breezes during the night.
It'll be completely calm and everything you're trying to do is try
to get to this border between Spain and France.
And then find this new breeze that's going to fill in out of the Gulf of Lion.
Here, they're both on the same time.
I can see the time up here.
Blue square and the green square.
And you see it's blue squares just reached Mallorca basically, and it is light.
Extremely light flat, calm, dead down wind.
And the green boat that has suffered so
much in the beginning, right, is now strong northwesterly.
As quick as the boat will go. The boat will go 20 knots or so, right?
So, strong northwesterly 20 to 25 knots.
Bit of a mistral,
they're enjoying themselves, and these guys
are flipping around their sails with no wind.
A prime example of, already at the start, you have to choose if you want to go for
the short term or the long term, right?
If you could have complete confidence in models, everyone would do that.
But here, the typical counter-argument will be, but
this is the Mediterranean, Mediterranean things can change very quickly.
Maybe that's what the model says now, but in six hours when the next model comes
out, it's going to be completely different.
Let's stick with the fleets, let's stay with the other boats, let's point more or
less to our waypoint, where we wanted to go, which is the south of Sardinia.
All right?
And decide later.
Some will say no, no.
I'm convinced.
Go there.
And you get this big split straight out of the starting box.
Already here, you have a prime example of how complicated it can be to actually
decide which way to go, right?
And how complicated it is to be on a boat, have a clear head to make those decisions.
Get those data, remember about the fuel, the cost of getting those data,
getting more models.
The processing power you need.
A boat that's moving around.
The guys outside are calling you that you have to come on deck to help out with
a sail change, because these are all sail changes.
Things happen, right?
So, you could easily imagine: why not get someone on the outside to actually do this.
What they call a shore based weather router.
That exists.
I mean, it's something I do as well, for the Barcelona World Race.
However, that is forbidden as it is for a lot of races.
They want boats to be completely self sufficient.
They have to take their decisions on board, with the tools they have on board,
with data they get on board.
As you can see, they can get
freely available weather information that you can download from the Internet.
I'm the meteorologist for the Barcelona World Race, so
I'm also providing them with models which are not freely available on the Internet.
So they can compare.
But there's a limit to the amount of data they can receive because
the cost involved and the time to actually think about it is limited.
All right?
The other thing we provide to the competitors is actually a written
forecast.
I look at the weather, I give them a written forecast.
That's not an advise on where they should go, but it is analysis of the weather.
Because sometimes you are so tired that you don't see this anymore, or you have
a problem with your Internet connection and you can't get a weather file.
A two-page written weather forecast in plain English that says
it's going to blow a gale, be careful, the seaside's going to be like this,
because maybe they didn't look at the waves, they only looked at the wind.
That sort of stuff.
And also, they can get that with even a very basic
satellite connection it will always work.
This is very much dependent on having all the technology working.
And you can't completely rely on that.
I mean, they can have problems with batteries,
they can have problems with their engine, the alternator is not working,
they're short of fuel, there's water in the fuel, the filter is blocked.
All sorts of stuff can happen.
So, it's very important as well that they get a very simple forecast out of a safety
point of view, so they don't get into any danger.
