Another Kind of Weather map

Thursday Morning in San Francisco

Forty knot gale from the north right outside the Golden Gate. 

Pretty mellow (On the way to Hawaii.) otherwise.

New Crew Member

Alejandro Dorazio

Proud care taker and skipper of Bear Class number 32 "Little Dipper".

I have been sailing in the bay for about five years and love racing sailboats. I am a pastry chef by trade, and I love working with my hands. Very passionate about wooden sailboats.

WEATHER (or not)

GRIB file for SF to HI effective 2016-06-29-0600 UTC

The wonders of modern technology!

I just made an email request for a prediction of the San Francisco to Hawaii weather for tomorrow. Then I sent out the request and got this custom made weather map a few minutes later. It shows the wind speed and direction, and the air pressure isobars. I've drawn a straight line from the start line to the finish line just to guide the eye. Clearly going straight takes you into lighter winds. A more southern route is indicated. But there's the rub. How south can you go without suffering from the increased distance?

That's what makes it a race. Makes it fun.

Please comment to the blog. We want to hear from you.

Ways to Communicate

This might be the last “Navigation Note”. A review.

1.     Sailmail

I  want to remind you that the primary means of communication with Shadowside during the race is via “Sailmail” over the SSB radio. The most important factor to keep in mind is to NEVER, NEVER, NEVER just hit “reply” when responding to an email from us. That will clog up the system and make a big mess.

To write to us, or to respond to something we have written to you, simply use the email address shadowside@hrmginc.com.

It is a good idea to start each email to us with routing info like:

From: Sally
To: Joe
Subject: Family Emergency

2.     Satellite Phone

Just send mail to: 881632663215@msg.iridium.com

3.      DeLorme “inReach”

Use the "message" popup at https://share.delorme.com/Shadowside
Located a little below the top of the page on the left side.

4.     Finally, the Blog

Just “Comment” on any blog post, and it will come to us.