This page is to let you know a little about me, Stan, and why I feel qualified to put together a Weather Page for Cruisers!

What makes one qualified to develop marine weather forecasts for cruisers? A good internet connection, High Frequency Radio & a love of the weather. It doesn't hurt to be a sailor and to have spent 2 years cruising primarily the Sea of Cortez visiting approximately 70 different anchorages in the Sea. And when I say 2 years, I mean we were on the boat full-time the entire period and spent both hurricane seasons in the Bahia de Los Angeles area along with about 25 other boats.

Anyway the purpose of this is to give you an idea what I use to develop a forecast and how I go about validating the accuracy of it. Each morning it takes about 2 hours of Internet work to put together a forecast of the west coast of Mexico including the Sea of Cortez. There is an additional hour or so spent trying to validate, or grade, the forecasts using actual observations from; boats (those that check in on the radio nets & online reports of ships that participate in the Voluntary Observing Ship project), ground reporting stations and satellite wind observations.

Since everyone is used to the format, I follow the forecast areas used by Don of Summer Passage Radio. Additionally, unless he is holding out a website or two, I use the same sources to put together my forecast as he does. There are about 30 websites I use for the forecasts & 14 I use for the online portion of the validation process in addition to listening to Amigo & Southbound Nets daily for onsite reports.

For the Short Term Forecast (0 – 2 days) these sources include:

NOAA High Seas Forecasts
Servicio Meteorológico National (Mexican Weather Service)
Various Satellite views
WeatherFax products (yup, they're still useful!)
Tropical weather discussions
COAMPS Model
National Center for Atmospheric Research RUC Model
GFS Model
NAMS Model
MM5 Model
ETA Model

Long Term Forecast (3 – 7 days) sources include:

WW3 Model
GFS Model
NOGAPS Model

Nightime Convection Reports sources include:

Servicio Meteorológico Nacional satellite loop
University of Sonora satellite loop

Tropical Weather sources include:

Joint Typhoon Warning Center
National Hurricane Service

Anyway, it is a labor of love and is my attempt to provide information to cruisers that I appreciated receiving when I was cruising. We now live full-time in Santiago, Colima, Mexico and try to assist cruiser's during the cruising season here. That includes support for Spectra Watermakers as I am a factory-trained technician.

So when you pass through Santiago, you can reach us on channel 22 by hailing for SolMate. We also monitor the Amigo, Sonrisa and Southbound Nets.