The ASCAT passed over you an hour or two ago so there is some wind data!!!! Over near Cape Scott it looks like just under 10 kts from the southwest. South of the cape are southerlies. So… headwinds… but not too strong… There’s a high that’s just southwest of the island, centered at 49 N 127 W, just off Nootka Island. Hopefully that center will move to your northwest so you have have the more favorable winds on its southeast side. The WRF has it doing that, but we’ll have to see.
Also, the models have the winds going N 20 kts overnight tonight in an isolated patch near and just off of Cape Scott. Then they weaken again tomorrow morning, and then noon ish start building again, all northwesterly, to 20 kts over night tomorrow (gusts to 30) and 25 Monday afternoon (gusts to 40 in the center of the high off the coast), before dying down again. Then Tuesday afternoon this model has the winds swing around to south/southeasterly ahead of an approaching storm.
EC says light wind today for the central coast, variable 5-15 past Cape Scott, becoming north 15 tomorrow morning and then NW 20 tomorrow evening. . EC says waves subsiding to only 1m late this evening!
OK, so this approaching storm. The GFS has you coming under it’s influence Tuesday afternoon and leaves it hanging there until Thursday. Of course predictability is not high on that… And I don’t have access to data past Monday from the other models.
So if you guys can handle the brisk tailwind, you can make a lot of progress before the next storm. It seems like you’d have to get pretty far out to sea to wait out a potentially 48 hour storm… the GFS has it getting down to 996 mb. Not as strong as the last one.
Forecaster Pendergrass
10:40 AM 4/21/2012