UPDATE: Saturday, June 18: follow the live updates and tracking of Bay boats here. Scroll down for a list of the Bay boats who have retired from the race.
Saturday's weather update: The storm is coming in from the south, and the low pressure system is coming off the land at Cape Hatteras, where they were reporting 25-30 knots and 7-8 foot seas. We will most likely see low 40 knots of breeze, but for the boats in the Gulf Stream, you'll see lots of waves very close together. It will be bumpy, to say the least, for the next 18-24 hours.
UPDATE: 2:40 p.m. - Click here to watch the live stream of the race start. UPDATE: Race is scheduled to start as planned. Watch the announcement here:
UPDATE: An announcement will be made at 11 a.m. EST Friday whether or not there will be a postponement in the race. Stay tuned.
While the weather didn't play much into the plot of the 2016 Annapolis to Bermuda Race, the Newport to Bermuda is another story. Bella Mente, the 72-foot Maxi with an all-pro crew, has already withdrawn due to concerns over the weather. With huge wind forecast in opposition to the Gulf Stream (which runs northeast), sailors are looking at 20-30 foot waves in short period. From the Bermuda Race website:
Weather is the deep concern of the 2016 Bermuda Race fleet of 184 boats. (There has been some attrition, some due to boat damage during deliveries and in a race, and one to the withdrawal of the Maxi 72 Bella Mente, a frequent candidate to be first to finish that is not sailing this time out of her owner’s weather concerns.) Over the past three days, conflicting weather forecasts have stirred up concern about the conditions that will confront the fleet after the start on Friday. One forecast seemed to indicate high wind at the start, another suggested a hard blow down the course, and a third offered the specter of rough going, with a strong north wind. To quote the race’s Gulf Stream expert (and multi-time navigator), oceanographer Dr. Frank Bohlen, “Wind blowing against the current results in a significantly larger wave amplitude and shorter wavelength than what appears when wind blows with current or when there is no current.”
The race has been postponed just twice in the last 49 runnings - once, in 1968, for a hurricane, and again in 1982 for storms in the Western Atlantic.
You can read the latest weather updates here, with a detailed analysis of the Gulf Stream near the rhumb line in the Newport to Bermuda Race. And as always, we'll have updates posted to our Newport to Bermuda Race page as they hit us. The race is set to start later this morning; look to our page for the live streaming footage.
