Red sky at morning, sailors take warning! Yesterday’s forecast light southeast winds and 1-2 foot seas had many boats staging to head for the Bahamas. Besides red skies, dawn this morning saw our boat rolling at the dock and the wind at the Sand Key Light (Key West) NOAA buoy 20-24 from 190 degrees (SSW).
I wonder what those boats staged at Rodriguez Key (a popular staging point to head to Bimini) did this morning … if you’re staged to go, do you move on to Dinner Key or other alternate anchorages? Or go? Probably sitting at Rodriguez Key isn’t an option unless you’re really shallow draft because there’s no protection from southerly winds and waves. I know the boats wanting to leave from this marina are still rocking and rolling on the fuel dock, open to south winds and waves.
Ugh, I hate weather. Yesterday at this time, this was a great weather window. Now it’s windy, wavy, nasty and evening raining!
So if you’re staged for the Bahamas, what did you decide? Please leave a comment and share!
Red sky at morning, sailors take warning!
Ole saying – the rest of the story – Red Sky in morning is no winds and the long boats where put over board and the crew rowed pulling the vessel until wind was found. So the warning is that the crew had to work extra hard and was dangerous work.
Note: look at the NOAASAT site (Atlantic hurricane wide geo sat) learn how to read the view from space and see what is going to happen way before it is reported. Your guess is better than someone else.
Rule of thumb in Key West is 2 – 3 of good days and 8 – 10 days of OMG days, this leaves many days at dock to discuss the next route at the bar.
Hi Page! That’s not the explanation given by NOAA and UK MET online. A google search for NOAA and UK MET validates that red sky at morning means bad windy weather, not fair weather. The Sand Key NOAA weather station this morning at sunrise reported wind from 190 degrees 20 gusting to 24 and it’s currently sprinkling rain on our boat. Here’s hoping it gets nicer later today! We were hoping to go spearfishing with the calm forecast from yesterday. Cheers! Jan
When I was a lad, admittedly well inland, it was “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. (Because fair weather was coming) Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning!” (Because the weather would get worse.) And the saying was accurate enough that we used it to decide if we should cut more hay or not!