oneeyedjackass
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2016
- Messages
- 156
- Fluid Motion Model
- C-242 C
- Vessel Name
- NIXIE
Thought I would do a trip report on a recent run up to Santa Barbara from our home marina in Long Beach. Don’t be shy with any comments or suggestion, always looking for a better way. 😀 We’ve found So cal weather can be a bit tricky. What’s happening onshore is most likely WAY different than what’s going on in the ocean. You can pretty much count on the wind and swells building from the west as the day goes on. Although we don’t have the currents like in Pacific NW to deal with, the westerly winds like to cause some grief. When heading up coast (west) it’s definitely a uphill run.
LB to SB is about 110 miles. The planning and prep for this trip starts about a week out. Just watching what the weather is doing offshore and witch way it’s trending. Although the distance isn’t super far the weather between the two places can be and usually is way different. I mainly use two apps. Marine and Windy. If something isn’t making sense or I need to dive deeper I just go to the NOAA website. Marine is a one stop shop for most of the info I need. It will give me general NOAA forecast with discussion, forecast by zone, and buoy reports for the zones I’ll be running in.
SCREEN SHOT OF MARINE APP SHOWING POINT FORECAST, COULD ALSO PULL UP ZONE FORECAST
SCREEN SHOT OF MARINE APP SHOWING WX FOR THE EAST SANTA BARBARA BUOY
With Windy I get a super cool look at what’s happening and the reported wind speeds. Make sure reported wind is displayed on map. This gives me an overall look at what the wind is actually doing compared to forecast.
SCEEN SHOT OF WINDY MID ROUTE SHOWING REPORTED WIND SPEEDS
With a distance of 110 mole I can estimate it will take 5-6 hours. Although with our R23 diesel we can go 26+ mph, that would be in perfect conditions and I know the farther northwest we go the more wind chop will build. Looking at the reported wind the day before lets me know we want to get there before 12 noon. Any time after that and the wind and wind chop right on the nose will slow us way down and make things uncomfortable. That give us a departure time of 5 am. Darkness and patchy fog make the radar invaluable with the early start. With everything preped to go the night before we just need to start up and untie. While we are cruising out of the Alamitos bay I’ll turn on the WX on the VHF and check both apps to see if anything has changed overnight. On the way up there are a few bailout marinas if the weather turns nasty or we can just turn around and go back. For this run it started out with no wind and smooth sea’s so we just gassed it and went as fast as we could knowing that the farther “up” we go the rougher and slower we’ll go. In the previous days forecast there was a chance for gale force winds and waves to 11 foot for the zone directly west of Santa Barbara. As we were in route that forecast came true and there were multiple security calls from coast guard warning mariners of the gale that was approaching the outer waters. Since it was 30 miles to the east we didn’t let change our decision making. The run ended up taking almost 6 hrs and we burned about 35 gallons of diesel. The last 10 miles were a bit choppy but Santa Barbara is super nice place to hang out for a few days.
LB to SB is about 110 miles. The planning and prep for this trip starts about a week out. Just watching what the weather is doing offshore and witch way it’s trending. Although the distance isn’t super far the weather between the two places can be and usually is way different. I mainly use two apps. Marine and Windy. If something isn’t making sense or I need to dive deeper I just go to the NOAA website. Marine is a one stop shop for most of the info I need. It will give me general NOAA forecast with discussion, forecast by zone, and buoy reports for the zones I’ll be running in.
SCREEN SHOT OF MARINE APP SHOWING POINT FORECAST, COULD ALSO PULL UP ZONE FORECAST
SCREEN SHOT OF MARINE APP SHOWING WX FOR THE EAST SANTA BARBARA BUOY
With Windy I get a super cool look at what’s happening and the reported wind speeds. Make sure reported wind is displayed on map. This gives me an overall look at what the wind is actually doing compared to forecast.
SCEEN SHOT OF WINDY MID ROUTE SHOWING REPORTED WIND SPEEDS
With a distance of 110 mole I can estimate it will take 5-6 hours. Although with our R23 diesel we can go 26+ mph, that would be in perfect conditions and I know the farther northwest we go the more wind chop will build. Looking at the reported wind the day before lets me know we want to get there before 12 noon. Any time after that and the wind and wind chop right on the nose will slow us way down and make things uncomfortable. That give us a departure time of 5 am. Darkness and patchy fog make the radar invaluable with the early start. With everything preped to go the night before we just need to start up and untie. While we are cruising out of the Alamitos bay I’ll turn on the WX on the VHF and check both apps to see if anything has changed overnight. On the way up there are a few bailout marinas if the weather turns nasty or we can just turn around and go back. For this run it started out with no wind and smooth sea’s so we just gassed it and went as fast as we could knowing that the farther “up” we go the rougher and slower we’ll go. In the previous days forecast there was a chance for gale force winds and waves to 11 foot for the zone directly west of Santa Barbara. As we were in route that forecast came true and there were multiple security calls from coast guard warning mariners of the gale that was approaching the outer waters. Since it was 30 miles to the east we didn’t let change our decision making. The run ended up taking almost 6 hrs and we burned about 35 gallons of diesel. The last 10 miles were a bit choppy but Santa Barbara is super nice place to hang out for a few days.