[PUP] Passage to Trinidad and taking advantage of eddies

[Truelove39 at aol.com]

Penny and I are about to embark on passage from Beaufort, NC to  Trinidad via 
St. John.  We have been awaiting suitable weather for two  weeks, and it now 
appears that we may depart early-mid next week.  We are  using Commander's 
Weather for forecasting, as we cannot hear Herb on SSB from  here.
 
We should arrive in St. John 7 days after departure; it is  another 3 days to 
Trinidad unless we stop along the way. This will be the  same route we took 
in 2005 except that last time we entered the Caribbean  through the Anegada 
Passage and made landfall at St. Maarten; this should  be more comfortable.
 
 Our "rhumbline" consists of three legs in order to avoid  eddies and is 
about 1200 miles. We should, with a fair tide, make 190 miles the  first 24 hours 
and average 170/day thereafter. 
 
Although eddies are larger and stronger in the Stream, they are also  strong 
enough in other areas to consider avoiding or taking advantage of. In  
preparing for this passage, I determined to find out about the eddies which  slowed 
us several hours a day on many days on our 2005 passage. Here is a  link to the 
site from which you can download a gif of sea-surface height  anomalies:
 
_http://argo.colorado.edu/~realtime/gsfc_global-real-time_ssh/_ 
(http://argo.colorado.edu/~realtime/gsfc_global-real-time_ssh/) 
 
Since colder water "sinks" a few cm and warmer water "rises," these  
anomalies are indicative of where the eddies lie. Using this information,  it is easy 
to determine a route that will keep you to the left of warm  eddies (CW) and 
to the right of the cold ones (CCW); you'll avoid head-current  and even pick 
up some speed. These eddies do not change location/size  much over the course 
of a day in the Stream, and less often in the rest of the  Western Atlantic, so 
for a 7-day passage you should be OK. Input the lat/lons  you desire, and be 
sure to choose "show contours" and "annotate contours."  Leave all else at the 
defaults. 
 
This information should be helpful when traveling in or near the Stream as  
well, as we do sometimes from Mayport FL to New York in the spring.
 
I hope some of you will find this information helpful.
 
Regards,
 
John 
"Seahorse"
 
 
**************One site has it all. Your email accounts, your social networks, 
and the things you love. Try the new AOL.com 
today!(http://pr.atwola.com/promoclk/100000075x1212962939x1200825291/aol?redir=http://www.aol.com/?optin=new-dp
%26icid=aolcom40vanity%26ncid=emlcntaolcom00000001)