Hi DDW,

Don't necessarily disagree with what you say, and as Steve notes, it's very important to understand who Chris' "audience" is, lots of folks seeking to get the green light to move from one 5 miles from one cay to the next on a picture-perfect day in the Exumas (grin)... Sure, his forecasts tend to be on the conservative side, as Herb Hilgenberg's often were as well. The one place where he tended to consistently under-estimate the conditions, in my experience, was when I was in Belize. It seemed he was almost always on the low side there, true wind speeds were often easily 10-15 knots higher than what he was forecasting, or even reporting as real-time conditions... More than anything else, I gathered that Belize is a pretty tricky region to forecast accurately, with some high ground close inland from the broad expanse of shallow water behind the barrier reef...

But on several occasions, I've found him to be spot on... A couple of years ago, I was taking a Valiant 42 to the islands, and just happened to arrive in Hampton as the Caribbean 1500 was ready to depart. They were all set to go, their router was seeing no real problem with the weather. However, a number of the rally participants were also listening to Chris, who was starting to sound the alarm about a major system which eventually developed into Tropical Storm Sean. Folks really started getting nervous, and staged almost what amounted to a sort of 'mini revolt', and the organizers at the last minute consented to postpone their departure... Instead of leaving on a Monday, we all eventually waited until Friday, which turned out to be a good thing, as TS Sean developed into some serious weather which kicked the ass of the NARC Rally fleet headed to Bermuda, resulting in a couple of abandonments, and the loss of one life... So, Chris was spot on with that one, and was pretty much one of the first one to see it coming...

On 2 other occasions, I've done deliveries with Kate from Rogue Wave as my crew, and as she and bernie have been sponsors of Chris, we had access to his forecasts... First time was a trip from the Rio Dulce up to Annapolis in early June, and Chris strongly advised us to get going as soon as possible. He foresaw the season't first TD developing behind us, and if we hadn't gotten out of the W Caribbean and up to FL as quickly as possible, we would have been stuck there, or in Isla Mujeres, for quite some time... So, while we had a rough trip beating our way out of that corner of the Caribbean, struggling to claw our way off the coast all the way to Isla, it was definitely the right call, and we had an awesome trip up the coast from FLL to Beaufort, as the weather in the Gulf of Mexico turned very nasty behind us...

Last June, bringing a Hallberg-Rassy 43 north from Trinidad, same deal... He called the development of TS Andrea well in advance, knew we would run out of wind completely about halfway thru the Bahamas. So, knowing that, we pushed hard to be in a good position to hunker down in a place like Lucaya or Nassau, but it turned out we were able to press on to Ft Pierce before Andrea passed over the FL peninsula just to the north of us a day later. Again, he was absolutely spot on way in advance. Without his forecast, we would have likely sailed to the E of the Bahamas after cutting thru the Mona Passage, instead of taking the route up thru the Bahamas and keeping hidey-holes like Luperon or the Exumas in play... Another boat - an Island Packet 38 - left Puerto Rico at around the same time we came thru the Mona Passage, and obviously they weren't listening to Chris. The boat was abandoned a week later after their encounter with TS Andrea off Charleston...

These guys have a really tough job, I wouldn't want to take on such a 'responsibility', I think Chris does an excellent job, all things considered...

'Racing' thru the Bahamas, the calm before the storm, the sea looked like this for 48 hours straight, not so much as a ripple... The nights, in particular, were magical...

best regards,

Jon