Chris Parker and his Marine Weather Center have announced a new weather forecast service for sailors! If you’re not familiar with Chris, he’s the first of all a former cruiser, so he understands weather implications from an experienced cruiser’s perspective.
Chris’ services were invaluable as we cruised the Western Caribbean to Cartagena, Colombia and back – as well as when we cruised the Bahamas and when we leave for the Eastern Caribbean, Chris will be our number one weather source once again. He offers many services, including SSB nets, email services, interactive services – we could email Chris asking for specific info on passage plans and even a personal phone-in service. Anything you could need and Chris’ interpretations are usually spot on and invaluable. (NOTE: We are not affiliated with the Marine Weather Center in any way other than as satisfied multi-time subscribers.)
Here’s an excerpt from the e-mail from Chris this week …
Beginning Monday, July 8, 2014, a NEW service available to all recipients of this email is a daily forecast (full multimedia or audio-only) for your geographical area:
E Caribbean
W Caribbean
Bahamas
US E CoastI will try to upload recordings before I go on the air at 6:30am AST/EDT.
In the future these may be available only to Subscribers to the SSB Voice Nets, but, for now, they’re available to anyone with an account at www.mwxc.com. Access recorded forecasts after logging into your account at www.mwxc.com.
Click here for the link to the Marine Weather Center. To access the new multimedia forecast, log into your account. If you’ve ever subscribed to Chris Parker’s weather services even if you’re not currently a subscriber, you should have a log in and password. We only subscribe when we’re planning to be cruising outside Florida — hopefully this coming winter! So we’re not current subscribers and I have a sign-in and password.
Once you log in, you’ll see this screen:
In right hand corner below the header, there’s a spot for Webcast and below that Current Audio/Video Forecasts. The Webcast is the free online webcast available to anyone (click here for the commuterCRUISER post with instructions).
The Current Audio/Video Forecast is the new feature, just announced. There are separate multimedia forecasts for the Eastern Caribbean, Western Caribbean, Bahamas and US East Coast. We watched this morning – it’s real time — for example we watched the 6 AM version of the multimedia forecast for today at 8 AM. Very cool.
He still also has the free version that anyone can watch without logging in… again, here’s the link – you’ll have to put in your boat name to get to listen (oh, and you’ll have to know the current schedule since you’re actually listening live to Chris interact with cruisers requesting information on their planned passages etc — click here and scroll down for the daily (M-Sa) schedule.
If you’re setting off to sail into the sunset, but sure to consider subscribing before you depart! Our favorite subscription is the e-mail and SSB combination – that way if we can’t hear Chris on one of the many different frequencies in the morning, we’ll get the detailed e-mail with all the info we need. Click here for info on all the available subscription options.
But no matter what weather sources you choose, please be SURE to have daily weather. In our opinion cruising isn’t safe without knowing the weather. Anyone have other favorite weather sources? Please leave a comment and share. Cheers! Jan
Did Chris say that he would only be doing the weather Monday-Wednesday-and Friday from here on? Everything on the website still shows “daily”. But I think he’s reducing his schedule unless there is a tropical event brewing…
They’re in the process of moving and upgrading equipment … here’s Chris’ e-mail about the schedule….. sorry it’s long…In order to complete major enhancements to my SSB installation and relocate office space…
Beginning Monday, July 8, 2014 I will work the following reduced schedule for July and August:
DAYS:
CLOSED on Tuesdays / Thursdays / Saturdays / Sundays (unless Tropical weather threatens, in which case I’ll conduct normal operations on these days – to the extent necessary to address Tropical weather).
OPEN on Mondays / Wednesdays / Fridays, on the following schedule:
SSB Voice Nets (and simultaneous Internet Webcasts):
4045 USB at 6:30am AST/EDT (1030 utc)
8137 USB at 7:00am (or a few minutes after) AST/EDT (1100 utc)
8104 USB at 8:30am (or a few minutes after) AST/EDT (1230 utc)
12350 USB at 9:15am AST/EDT (1315 utc)
Regional Daily Email forecasts: Monday, Wednesday, Friday (additional days as necessary if Tropical weather threatens). I’ll try to email forecasts earlier – for the past couple months I have devoted several “normal working hours” most weekdays to preparing for planned improvements. Going forward, I should be able to devote most of my attention to weather duties on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays.
Custom email and phone-in forecasts: available 7 days/week after 10am, but prefer Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
More details on service improvements in the coming months…thank you for your support!…Chris.
In order to complete major enhancements to my SSB installation and relocate office space…
Thanks! I’m sharing this!
Wrote a quick post on it for Thursday — apparently lots of people have the same question, you were just the first! 🙂