Archive for the ‘Weather’ Category

Tsunami Warning – And Then What?

Saturday, April 14th, 2012

[To Scorpiosail Home Page]

– Are you aware of the recent tsunami warning?

We had just tied our lines to the quay in the recently constructed harbour at Foamullah island in the Maldives. Two young locals on a moped stopped and told us that there had been a giant under water earth quake, 8.7 on the Richter scale, in Indonesia, near the location of the disastrous Boxing Day tsunami 2004. The government had issued a Tsunami Warning.

Malla and I looked at each other in disbelief. Pirates, political riots, tsunamis. What is next?

Read more ..

Political Unrest and Routing Decisions

Wednesday, February 15th, 2012

[To Scorpiosail Home Page]

A year ago our plan to sail across the Arabian Sea to the Mediterranean was aborted because of the pirates. Now, just as we prepare to leave Thailand to sail to South Africa via the Maldives, there is political unrest in the atoll country. The democratically elected president has been forced to resign and protesters are burning police stations.


(We can see you, but you wont see us)

Read more ..

Strange Rescue at Sea

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

[To Scorpiosail Home Page]

Recently there was a strange story in The Phuket News.

NAVY HELPS YACHT TO SAFETY

According to the article, the Royal Thai Navy has rescued a sailing vessel with a crew of two foreigners, an Italian and a South African, on the way from Langkawi to Phuket. The crew had called for help from turbulent seas in the middle of the night. They reported that their vessel was struggling in heavy waves.

The navy searched for the boat for two hours, and about six hours later the sailing vessel was towed safely to a port in Satul Province.

This article raises several questions, but I will address only a few. There is no mentioning of break-downs of the yacht or it’s equipment and no report of sickness aboard either. As far as I am aware, there was no horrible storm blowing at the time. The area in question (outside Satun province) is not an open ocean, on the contrary, the yacht was on a coastal passage, where there are several large islands along the way. Depending on the direction of the wind, it should have been possible to find relative shelter either behind the mainland or one of the islands. The waters are generally shallow all over and anchoring is possible almost anywhere.

Obviously it was pitch dark when the call was made, so maybe the problem had to do with navigation …

Unexpected weather?

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

[To Scorpiosail Home Page]

Two weeks ago Phuket and several other regions of Thailand were hit by severe storms, causing several fatalities and great loss of property. On shore landslides killed dozens of locals and tourists and on the coast boats broke their moorings and were washed up on the beaches or smashed against rocks.

When we arrived in Phuket on the second of April, after our two-week passage from the Maldives, we were told it was the first non rainy day in more than a week. There had been periods of 50 knots of wind and there had been almost 200 mm of rain in at least one 24-hour period. Good timing on our side for once, it appears.

The reason I’m writing this post is that I find it difficult to understand why these storms are allowed to cause so much grief and destruction. After all, they don’t just fall out of the sky unexpectedly. Actually, when I was preparing for our trip in the Maldives more than a week before the storm and 1,500 nautical miles (almost 3,000 km) away, I saw that this low pressure system was about to hit Thailand – that is if you believe what the GRIB files are predicting 7-8 days ahead.

On March 18, two days before our departure from Male, I downloaded GRIBs showing cyclonic-pattern winds at Phuket on the 168 hour (7 days) forecast. The forecasts on the two following days confirmed that there was something unusual going on. The image below shows what the GRIB file of March 20 forecasted for the Phuket area on March 27.

This forecast didn’t concern us aboard Scorpio at all, we would still be far away south of the Bay of Bengal. However, we naturally kept a close look at the progress of this predicted weather system all the way.

But how could so many in Thailand be taken by surprise?

The Countdown Has Started

Friday, March 18th, 2011

[To Scorpiosail Homepage]

The last face of our preparations for a longer passage is looking for weather and deciding on the exact date of departure. We have been doing that for a couple of days now.

Read more ..

23,000 lightnings

Friday, August 6th, 2010

[To Scorpiosail Home Page]

The tropical weather in Finland this summer is astonishing. After my previous log post we were hit by a second storm. The first one was called Asta and a few days later arrived Veera. And a third one is predicted to hit the republic in a couple of days.

The Finnish Meteorological Institute reports that there was 23,000 cloud-to-earth lightnings during the Veera-storm. They have some kind of lightning detector network for counting. This number of lightnings is not unique, but extremely rare.

During the past 19 years we have been cruising almost all over the tropics aboard Scorpio. Avoiding certain areas when they are potentially exposed to tropical storms, hurricanes, cyclones, taifuns etc. has been our main guide-line when planning our routes. Look at the photo above, it is of a camper field in Pirkanmaa, Finland, where 50 of 100 camper wagons were completely destroyed. The destruction is quite similar to what we have been used to see in photos from marinas in places like like the Caribbean and Florida after a hurricane has passed. In Florida, however, people should know from experience that those disasters occur every now and then. The folks in the forests of Finland were taken by complete surprise – this was unthinkable.


(Click on chart for a blow up)

On the chart above you can see the path of the two storms, Asta and Veera. Asta hit from the southeast and passed very close to our summer place (between Mikkeli and Imatra on the map), but we didn’t have any problems. Just a few days later Veera-storm entered from the southwest and crossed the country in a northeasterly direction.

It is interesting that the traffic on our web site trippled after my previous blog. Apparently these climate issues are fascinating.


On 3rd August, when my previous post was published we had 3 times the normal traffic on this site.

Tropical Finland – a bear market?

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

[To Scorpiosail Homepage]

Sometimes when abroad we hear stories of polar bears roaming the streets in Finland. There’s no truth in these tales of course, but the winters can be very cold indeed. Last winter’s lowest temperature was below -40C (-40F). This is why we prefer to spend our winters in the tropics, where we have been accustomed to temperatures around 40C (104F) – a difference of 80C (176F)! The lowest temperature we had any night aboard Scorpio in South East Asia was 29C (84.2F).

This summer, the weather has been extraordinary warm and dry in Finland. Because of the low humidity we have found it very pleasant although some people complain that it has been too hot. Maybe our blood has thinned after more than a decade in the tropics.

Our summer place is located in Puumala, which was on average the warmest spot in the country in July, with several days of highest-recorded temperatures, around 33C (91.4F). An all time high of 37.2C (99F) was recorded in Liperi not far away (as a comparison, the all time low -51.5C (-60.7F) was recorded in northern Finland in 1999). We found 27C in the water, which is almost the same as in Thailand were we last went swimming from the yacht.


(Source:Lehtikuva)

Also the tropical storms seem to be heading this way now. A week ago a violent windstorm, blowing up to 30m/s (almost 60 knots), produced by a band of fast-moving thunderstorms, crossed the country causing devastating damages, chopping thousands of hectares of forest, that crushed houses and cars and broke power-lines, leaving tens of thousands of homes without electricity, water and phone connections.


Canis lupus lupus

It isn’t just the weather that has been exotic. The wildlife has been exiting too. There has been several cases with wolf packs killing dozens of sheep even in densely populated areas in southwestern Finland. In the north and along the Russian border there has been several sightings of bears, although not polar bears.


Ursus arctos arctos

Yesterday radio programs were interrupted by an announcement from the police: People in and around Rovaniemi, the largest city in northern Finland, were warned that a bear had been sighted and folks were advised to stay inside.

The bear is ever present in Finland, however, and in many ways. The Russian Bear is a national personification for Russia, used in cartoons and articles at least since the 17th century, usually in a less flattering context – often implying that Russia is “big, brutal and clumsy”.


The Russian bear threatening Georgia,
(source: www.rendevouswiththedestiny.blogspot.com)


A cartoon, illustrating the world around 1900.
(Remember to click on it for a blow up)

And indeed, Finland has several hundred years of unhappy experiences with her big neighbour.

Finland itself, in it’s coat of arms, is illustrated as a lion defending the West against the East. The right fore-paw is replaced with an armoured hand brandishing a (western, straight) sword, while trampling on an (oriental, crescent shaped) saber with the hind-paws.

During this long hot summer we have been refreshing ourselves with larger quantities than usual of my favourite beverage, beer. One of the most popular beers is called Karhu, which is Finnish for bear. This fact brings us back to the polar bear, or actually the Polar Beer, which we found in an unlikely place, namely Venezuela – a rather tropical country as well.


(Source: www.popartuk.com)

The beer market for the thirsty in southern Finland has long been Tallin in Estonia, only a couple of hour’s ferry ride away. With Estonia’s entry in the European Union and increase of their economy the difference in prices is decreasing, but is still substantial if you are buying quantities. It is common to go there to stock up with beer and booze ahead of weddings and other big parties.

The word Bear Market, of course, has little to do with the mammal or with beer, and is usually used to describe a general decline in the stock market over a period of time.


A perfect description of a lurking bear market
(Source: www.cityunslicker.blogspot.com)


Graphic of two bear markets
(Remember: click for a blow up)

Let’s hope that the most recent bear market, that started in late 2007 is now behind us. The beer market is doing well, however.