11:35 PM Tue 23 Dec 2008 GMT
Roger 'Clouds' Badham, the very well known Australian meteorologist has been providing basic Sydney to Hobart forecasts and much more detailed forecasts with full notes since the mid-1980's and having followed all those races in detail he feels it time for a new Handicap Trophy - the Clouds Badham Trophy.
This morning he said, 'Everyone knows the fairest part of the race course, is from Sydney Heads to Tasman Light.
'I think there should be a prize from the start to Tasman Light, because the rest is lottery. The winner is so much dependant upon when you get to Tasman Light. You get there at midnight and you are shot duck. You get there at midday and you're laughing.
'The Hobart winner is pretty much determined by God in terms of how long it's going to take, to sail from the Heads to Tasman Light and that ocean bit is the function of the weather system on those one, two or three days.
'The reality for the Hobart racers, the best you do is be the best in your speed band, then if it's the luck that your lot get there at the perfect time, then you will win. Otherwise you will get buried.'
 | Straight-talking veteran meterologist Dr Roger Badham - Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2007 - |
Having got that off his chest Badham returned to the subject of weather forecast for the blue water classic.
-'These days there is an enormous amount of information of which Navigators and Tacticians can OD on, but there's only still a small amount of information which is really relevant.
'The crews tend to get a lot of peripheral information which is not that useful.
'For anyone the doing the race, there following list is relevant
1. Quick SCAT winds, you know, reality - which is only twice a day, and sometimes you're in the gap.
2. Observations from the coastal reports from the bureau;
3. Computer models, which they can keep getting, the GFS, because that's public domain, so they can keep running their routing programs. The routing program is only good in the ocean. Once you start butting up against the coast - development of the weather systems near the coast - and the model is never truly perfect.
4. There your own observations. Eyeball Mark I
'You have to marry all those together. It's the same in this race as it is in any other race, the Volvo, the Fastnet, the Vendee, Southport, whatever.
'You've got to look at those four corners of data or information that you have, and you've got to reconcile them.
'As usual, they won't always be consistent. There will be differences which you've then got to decide which is the most relevant or which one is pertinent or which one is going to work and which one do I throw out, because it's not relevant or it's not as important.
'Mostly they throw out their own observations, which is a pity.
'The amount of data available these days to sailors mid race is extraordinary, and it'll only get more voluminous.
'In years to come, The quick SCAT eventually will become more frequent. It just gets better and better. The navigator's role has gone from knowing where he is and finding out where to go, and the weather forecaster's role is basically disappearing in front of his eyes as the computer models get better and better.
'I used to spend all my time just trying to figure out what the weather was going to do in three days; now you're pretty confident about what it's going to do in three days and you're trying to get down to much more intricate bits of the detail.
'Trying to figure out which model might be the best to work on, this can change over time. At the moment it's a little bit more complex than what the models are trying to show.
'That's often the case until you get very close, because the complexity tends to wash out of the models after about 96 hours. If you're trying to look further than 96 hours then you're fooling yourself.'
And we guess if you do that... you won't win the Clouds Badham Trophy?
by Rob Kothe Sail-World.com
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