Following a recent survey of members the OCC is setting up a network of shore based members with access to internet ice and weather information to advise cruising members who inevitably have more limited access to such information. This will be a purely voluntary arrangement but it hoped that all parties will enjoy and benefit from the process.

If you would like to register, either as a shore based advisor or as a cruising recipient of advice, then please do so here by replying to this topic. For those new to the Forum you will need to log on to reply and I suggest you tick the box "Notify me when a reply is posted". I will post my own reply below as I am delighted to say that Peter Craig-Wood has agreed to route Shimshal across the Davis Strait in summer 2018.

We don't want to make this overly bureaucratic but it wold be prudent for all parties to declare when registering that the advice being offered is give in good faith, free of charge and with no liability attached. Similarly the cruising recipient should declare that they understand that the advice on offer is not a professional service and that the skipper has final responsibility for how the advice is applied. The OCC has no responsibility for the accuracy of any forecasts and information and it's only role is to introduce the advisor to the skipper. I will create a downloadable PDF to attach to this post with a fuller disclaimer which can be used to try protect all parties.

I really hope this new arrangement works well and allows all participants, cruising and shore based to enjoy each others experiences and adventures. This project is only available to OCC Members.

Simon
edited by simoncurrin on 11/27/2017

Sally and I on Shimshal have taken up the kind offer of weather routing and ice routing from OCC Member Peter Craig-Wood for our passage from Aasiaat (68 48N) in Greenland to Halifax, Nova Scotia during the summer of 2018.

Peter has sailed tens of thousands of miles in the Atlantic with some 18 Atlantic crossings. He no longer owns a boat and is shore based but wishes to lend his experience to assist actively cruising members. Although he has no personal experience of the Davis Strait he is excited about learning about the weather systems that afflict these waters and the sources of information available. He has no experience of ice navigation but is keen to learn to interpret ice charts and satellite imagery and pass what information he can glean to Shimshal when underway. Shimshal will be able to receive emailed attachments via IridiumGo but will not have broadband capability when at sea and so Peter's information will be invaluable to us.

For my part I am pleased to acknowledge that any advice I receive will be given voluntarily, in good faith and that no liability shall be attached. As skipper of Shimshal I will use my own discretion in interpreting any forecasts that I receive and will be solely responsible for all weather, ice and routing decisions. I also understand that the OCC accepts no liability for the accuracy of any forecasts or observations.

Simon

Hi Simon,
This is a great idea and likely a boon to any OCC member heading into ice. For Alchemy, we used a shore-side "techy" (our son-in-law) and he and Ginger found ways to compress pictures (of ice, satellite and helicopter) and of ice charts that made the downloading of same acceptable by sat-phone and still easily interpret-able. It was above my pay-grade, but I am sure they could write up their procedures for accomplishing the compression in a way that might be helpful.
My best, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy

Hi Simon,
Ginger reminds me that you were helpful at suggesting compression ideas, so the previous offer is probably not necessary. Let me know.
Ginger and I have always done our passages alone and prefer it that way. Our Atlantic crossing through the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland and into Canada felt like it had elements that warranted having a third person on board. Ginger and I have come to terms with the idea that something bad might happen, so we just do not think about it a great deal.
So, I was quite surprised about the level of added anxiety that accumulated in me with the responsibility of having a crew on board. One way of dealing with this was to hire back-up for my weather forecasting/routing. I used Commander’s Weather who I knew to be experienced in these high latitude areas.
Passage making in North Atlantic waters, especially northern NA waters, I always feel that there is a target on my back. CW provided the feeling that someone had my back. Their suggestions were always in line with what I had previously worked out, but they added details and options which may not have come to mind otherwise. And it was good to have someone confirming that they saw no potential for a weather surprise in the making.
All in all, they brought down the anxiety level. They were quite responsive to give and take questions and provided reports when requested. Even between the occasional reports (where I generated a fee) they would send occasional heads up (a low is actually tracking farther south than previously forecast so winds for our trip are likely better for sailing, for ex.). Our passages proved, in the end, to be really quite wonderful weather and winds with no surprises, but CW were a very nice back-up for a trip that was very new and anxious for us.
BTW, I have used SSB (Winlink) for all wx and comm for decades of cruising. In these higher lats where the sun sets late and rises early, I could, with effort, get gribs, wx & email underway, but found it far more difficult, often impossible, when at anchor. We were very glad to have installed a sat-phone, although there is a learning curve for its use which should be anticipated.
My best, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy

Dick
It would be really helpful if Ginger could post on compressing images as we all do things differently.

Richard, my source of ice data for the last 2 summers, simply cropped the image to show the area of interest and then saved it as a .JPG with a moderate degree of compression aiming to keep the attachment less than 100 kilobits. He was always careful to keep one image per email. We found Iridium coped easily with this.
Simon