While we certainly had enough rain last weekend, get ready for some great weather this coming week. The last Wednesday night race was a bit chilly but that is springtime sailing in the Northwest, it’s only going to get better. Besides, as long as we have wind, who cares? In addition, we certainly didn’t get clobbered with rain the way the north side of Kauai did, getting 28” of rain in 24 hours. 
The house we used to stay at that was located on the beach at Hanalei Bay at the pier, was destroyed when the Hanalei River went way over its banks. I’m trying to get some pictures but it’s very sad.
So while we will have a weak cold front move over us tonight and bring a little more rain to the area, the post-frontal system will have high pressure build into the region over the weekend. As you can see from the 500MB charts, a thermal low pressure will set up along the Oregon coast Monday and Tuesday as an upper ridge shifts over the Pacific Northwest bringing us some nice and warm weather.
Click to enlarge any image.
As we say, the best day for breeze in the Northwest is the first day the ridge of high pressure starts to build over our area. That should be tomorrow, however, we will be in an area of strong onshore flow which will mean a strong westerly in the Straits as well as a strong flow in through the Chehalis Gap. Those winds have to meet somewhere and that will be in the Central Sound at least for tomorrow morning. By around midday, the northerly should move down the Sound and we should have 8-10 knots of northerly building slightly as the afternoon wears on.
Sunday should be even better with 10-15 knots of northerly in the morning and then building into the 18-20 knot range by late afternoon. We should be able to get plenty of races in this weekend with lots of tired sailors showing up for work on Monday.
There will be tides but not all that bad and depending on how much clearing we have Saturday morning, the start of the flood should bring the stronger, steadier northerly down with it.
Tidal Currents at West Point.
0900 Slack
1030 Ebb .35 knots
1224 Slack
1900 Flood 1.12 knots
Sunday
1012 Slack
1130 Ebb .21 knots
1318 Slack
1954 Flood 1.03 knots
It’s worthwhile to look at the graph of tidal current velocities to explain the gap (≈6 hours, instead of the usual 3) between the midday slack and max flood.
Have a great weekend!
Bruce has raced and cruised the Pacific Northwest his entire life. He earned a Bachelor’s of Science from the University of Washington in Biological Oceanography and learned meteorology “to keep from getting kicked around on the race course.” Bruce spent nearly two decades as Associate Publisher for Northwest Yachting Magazine, retiring in mid-2015, and was the chairman of the board of trustees for the Northwest Marine Trade Association in 2014. (photo of Bruce driving Playstation is a bit dated, but cool)