Our weather forecasting did not work out too well on Saturday at Canberra where the various models had a fair breeze for sailing the full sized rig in the Laser State Titles. After surviving a wild afternoon where most of the fleet capsized at the gybe mark I am less sure of the various wind models. In Canberra on Sunday they were more accurate and we ended up with no racing due to lack of wind so the survivors of the three full rig races on Saturday did quite well.
Fast forward to Tuesday and the forecasts for Wednesday are pretty challenging. The day should start off wet with thunderstorms and a low pressure system should establish just off shore from Sydney directing strong southerly winds onto our course. The wind will abate further away from the coast but one of the forecast models has gusts to 40 knots on our race course area.
The challenge for course setters is that the weather system has not established yet and the distance the system has to travel until the start of the race tomorrow is quite substantial. Then there is the added concern that if the forecast is for the winds to be unsafe at 7 pm then what do they do at the scheduled start time?
The rain forecast from Windy for Wednesday at 6pm
The 7pm wind forecast from Windy for Wednesday night