Goodbye to Bill

The National Hurricane Center has stopped issuing Tropical Storm Advisories on Bill.  The storm passed well to the north of RU27, and continues to head towards the United Kingdom.  Back here in New Jersey, Bill dropped a lot of rain.  Mostly street flooding and downed branches and power lines.  Driving in to Rutgers I noticed the road up the hill to Charles Lindbergh’s old house was closed – must of had more damage. 

Here is the atmospheric pressure pattern and the ship observations of the winds from Oceanweather.  We see the large basin-scale high pressure system over the North Atlantic, with winds running about 10  knots south of the storm near the Azores.

Looking at Oceanweather’s wave forecast, the high wave activity is moving across the Atlantic with the storm, staying north of the Azores.   Seas are currently about 7-8 ft in the vicinity of RU27.  They are expected to decrease as Bill continues to head towards the U.K.   Before leaving for the Azores, we checked in with Vince Cardone at Oceanweather about the cruise plan to visit RU27.  In talking with Vince, we decided the plan would be to wait for Bill to move east past the Azores, then to head out on the boat immediately after the storm as the seas were dropping, and before anything else develops in the Canaries.

Zooming into the location of RU27, we are currently 370 kilometers, or 200 nautical miles from Faial. Assuming a conservative speed of 6 knots, thats about 33 hours of sailing.  If we leave Faial later tonight (August 25), it means we arrive on August 27, exactly 4 months after RU27 was deployed on April 27th. 

A quick look at the satellite imagery says we are still in the 23-24C water, about 73-75 degrees F.  Not too cold for the divers, but they’ll need a bit of a wet suit if they plan on spending some time in the water.