5 EXPERT TIPS

WILL HARRIS ON MAKING A NAV PLAN

- 

When he's working up a weather and routing plan for an offshore race, Will Harris likes to build up the information in layers. The work can start weeks in advance for a big race like the Rolex Fastnet Race, but the homework really starts ramping up in the final seven days.

“From one week out we're looking at the big picture, how the jet stream is moving, how the synoptic charts are shaping up.

“I'm not talking to the rest of the crew at this stage, I don't want to bother them with a plan that's got a high chance of changing in the coming days. But I'll look to get them all involved in the final stages when things are starting to look more certain,” he explains.

The depth of Will's research is too great to cover in full detail here, but his five tips should help set you up with a good understanding of how to put your own weather and routing plan in place.

GET THE BIG PICTURE

Studying synoptic charts will help you understand the big picture. If we're doing a race around the English Channel, we're in an area of a few hundred miles radius. We need to understand what are the features on a bigger scale, what are the main features influencing us? Is there high pressure over Europe? Is there a low pressure system coming in?

It's important to understand the bigger picture before we dig into a smaller, more detailed area, because if we don't understand the bigger picture we don't understand the dynamics or the factors that might be changing as we're racing. For example, if we're in a high pressure system, we know that can mean you're more likely to see night breezes as the sun's going down, or thermal breezes. Whereas if we're in low pressure situations it’s much less likely for that to happen, and we're relying more on the gradient breeze.

ANALYSE MULTIPLE WEATHER MODELS