The Pacific NW Offshore (formerly Oregon Offshore) got off to a nice start yesterday and had a fairly speedy run up the coast ahead of the front that is passing over the area today. Unfortunately, as the fleet turned the corner at Neah Bay and started towards Port Angeles, the breeze quit. One boat, Haven, in the Cruising Class used their four-hour powering allowance to move right up to the leader, Rage who is now 22 miles from the finish. I included the track which shows Rage spent a fair amount of time going nowhere. The outlook for more wind isn’t good even though at Diamond Point on Discovery Bay we now have 30-knots of SE. While Port Angeles Coast Guard Station is showing NNW at 3, the Ediz Eddy is definitely in play. There is just not going to be much wind in the Central Strait until midday tomorrow. There will be patches of breeze maybe to 10 knots but those will come and go.
Certainly can’t complain about the rain today, we need it, don’t worry, tomorrow is going to great with some rain returning on Sunday. So just how bad is the drought in the west? I enclose this comparison for your edification.
Tomorrow will be the best day of the weekend with lots of attempted sailing going on. In Canada (not yet open to Americans) they were going to have the Round Bowen Island Race however that has been canceled. In the Central Sound, we’ll have the WSSA Blake Island Race, Leukemia Cup Regatta, and the Summer Vashon. All of these will be light air affairs.
In the North Sound, we’ll have Mad Dash out of Edmonds which of all the events this weekend has the best chance of having some breeze.
Today’s Surface Analysis and Satellite Pic show why we are going to have such a light air weekend, there simply isn’t much of a pressure gradient. That low-pressure system offshore with its’ attached frontal system is slowly weakening and not moving very far or very fast. The Jet stream is still to the south of us and will only move slightly to the north over the next couple of days. This will keep temps on the cool side bring us sporadic showers through the upcoming week. As I said, I’m fine with that. Anything to keep the fire danger down.
Todays 500MB Analysis has an interesting upper-level cut-off low in the western Pacific which we should watch
The Chart for tomorrow shows an increasing gap in the pressure gradient, with a weak high-pressure system over Central Washington.
The Surface Chart for Sunday shows a weak warm front moving over the Sound with the offshore low still not moving very much, if at all. The 500Mb Chart confirms why.
The Surface Chart for Monday still has the front from Sunday still over the area and the offshore low weakening to 1004Mb and remaining stationery.
The 500Mb Chart for the 15th of June shows the jet stream taking quite a wild meander after it leaves our area.
Have a great weekend and congrats to all participants in the WA360 Race which started on Monday. The first boats finished yesterday with monhulls beating multihulls and while the human-powered boats led all the way to Bellingham they finally ran out of gas and the sailboats caught up very quickly when there was finally some wind. Exciting finish to watch yesterday.
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)