Author: Ken Mckinley

The global coronavirus pandemic has affected all of our lives in countless ways, and ocean voyagers are no exception.

The 2019 Atlantic hurricane season has been rather active so far, and the historic peak of the season, which is Sept. 10, is two weeks in the rear-view mirror at the time of this newsletter.

As we have passed the summer solstice, many U.S. ocean voyagers may be heading north or south of the border.

As we finish up 2018, I thought I would use this newsletter to talk briefly about a couple of topics rather than go into more detail about one topic.

The title of this newsletter sounds a bit like a medical device or a healthcare plan, but it actually refers to a weather system that can form in the Mediterranean Sea and cause strong winds, heavy rains and very rough seas.

As I write this in late August, the Northern Hemisphere hurricane seasons are well underway.

I recently spent a few days in Newport, R.I., briefing clients on weather and strategy for the Newport to Bermuda sailboat race.

Weather conditions along the U.S. West Coast have made many headlines from last summer through this past winter and into the spring.

Last month, I wrote about some changes to the website of NOAA’s Ocean Prediction Center (ocean.weather.gov) and also to some of the products they produce.

For those who rely on NOAA’s Ocean Prediction Center products for their ocean voyaging pursuits — whether through their website, via FTPmail, via HF weatherfax or from other means — you have likely noticed several changes in the past year or so.

In late October, we are currently in the waning weeks of the 2017 hurricane season in the northern hemisphere, and in many ways it has been one for the ages.

Mariners are quite familiar with tides in most parts of the world, and most probably have a tide table posted on the refrigerator door, in the truck or on board at the nav station.

The Marion Bermuda sailboat race took place a week earlier than normal this year due to the America’s Cup races going on in Bermuda, thus allowing the racers to become spectators for that event once they reached the island.

Low-pressure systems are the weather systems that produce most of the “bad” weather over the world’s oceans, meaning strongest winds and roughest seas.

Thunder and lightning while underway at sea can be rather unnerving and can also present some significant risks.

As I write this in August of 2016, the Summer Olympics are underway in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. A couple of news stories from the first couple of days of the events noted that the weather was a factor in some events on the beach and on the water.

The start of the Atlantic hurricane season was June 1, and in the eastern Pacific the season began on May 15.

When I first began writing these newsletters in 2007, in one of the first issues I wrote about the availability of weather data for mariners on the Internet.