Not good news.

Well we've had the most unusual September for a long time. Several blocking high pressures and the jet stream further north than usually has meant we've not had the wind or weather that would suit us. We are also running out of daylight hours at a rapid rate of knots!

Here's the latest from Dave Thomson

Hi Marra,

Yes - There are no possible days currently forecast (about 10 days ahead ) The jet stream seem to be getting established North of us so its mostly NW and W. Some chance of SW about a week from now but it looks cloudy and rainy again.

I'll keep looking and let you know if there are any suitable days coming up.

David

Rising and setting times for the Sun

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?month=10&year=2009&obj=sun&afl=-11&day=1&n=919

We only have 11 hours of daylight up until 8th October - This is pushing it for safety reasons. Its also getting colder. We do not want to spend a night in the Irish Sea!

Crossing postponed and more training

We decided to postpone the trip at the last minute on Sunday morning due to the wind forecast. The metoffice was predicting up to force 8 and whilst its kiteable its not good for a long crossing. The boats would not sail in that sort of wind and the sea state is pretty rough. We now have to wait for another weather window. We hope that its soon as we are running out of light and also the cold will be a factor.

We did a training day today with all 6 of us riding and using all our equipment. We have a few improvements to make to our equipment and we'll be looking into that over the next few days.

We planned to go from St Bees down to Silecroft and back however the wind changed from the forecast SW to SSW when we were on the water and we only managed to get to seascale and back as it was a hard upwind slog with lots of tacking. We covered 45 miles in about 3 or so hours. There were a few glitches on the way but it turned out to be a useful excercise!

Lets hope we get some good wind soon!

Further weather update

We have a further update for the weather from Dave Thompson. We are amber almost green for travel on sunday and attempting the crossing on monday. Forecast is looking excellent!! Hopefully the sea state will be good as we've had not much wind recently.

Hi Martin,

Hmm - Monday morning is still looking great but theyve now got the front coming in a bit earlier, so by about lunchtime there will be winds up to around 30 mph (still SSW ) - and the rain will be chasing you across, although the winds reduce and veer a bit after the front is through .

If anything I think it likely that their prediction will be a bit early (more often than fronts are later than forecast ) Its still a real possibility that it will change back to yesterday forecast.

Is 30mph too much ?

Tuesday - winds are OK strength but WSW veering to W by the afternoon - and the rain will have cleared.

David

Update on Weather

It looks like our weather guru's are telling us that this blocking high pressure will be moving away towards the end of the weekend and bringing back southerly or south westerly winds again.

If it does, and we'll know closer to the weekend, then we could be a go on monday or tuesday!

Sponsors funding and raising money

Just got word from Stuart that he has secured funding from AMEC for the trip. This will complete our requirements to ensure that the boats and travel are fully funded, thank to Stuart and AMEC for this.

It appears that people are not using the Just Giving accounts as with the amount of publicity we've given the site the amount is moving very slowly. Martin was competing at the British Paragliding Cup and raised over £300, all these people had been emailed but not donated until Martin got them in a headlock and made them cough up. (Only kidding!) Thanks to all the Pilots at the event for sponsoring Martin and us, its a good cause people so give as much as you can in these testing times.

The point is that the Justgiving site is safe to use so please use it if you can!

We just recieved the Mapsource software from Garmin and here's the route on the Chart.

Back from Tiree - Another meeting - Long Range Forecast

A couple of the riders had a mental trip in Tiree, 5 days out of 5 riding, some good waves and strong winds. There'll be footage and photographs on the Cumbria Power Kiting Club website.

We've got the radios and we need to program them. We've also got wetsuits, boots, harnesses and vests from Pro-Limit who've given us an excellent deal on equipment.

We had a meeting last night to do some rider interviews, some final planning, test radios and discuss routing plans. We also put the Gravitron and Blue-Eye logos onto some of the kites.

We also have some news on the forecast from one of the paragliding meteo experts.

Here's the info:

Hi Martin,

We're starting to get long range forecasts for the 14th onwards - and the general pattern is looking very hopeful. The big HP which is setting up from Wednesday this week will give calm seas and when it moves E it will introduce winds between S and SW as the next LP approaches. Thats currently forecast to happen around mid next week. The problem is that the forecast models usually underpredict how long blocking HPs will last, so we may have a situation of it looking good about 4 days ahead then finding that the HP sticks and delays the winds starting. (I guess from a flying point of view that would be good !) I'll keep you updated as it develops.

David

So it looks like we have a potential go. Bring it on!

Meeting - Tuesday 2nd September

Well its getting close to the time now. We have two weeks until the window begins. The big training distance did not transpire we did not get the forecast wind for once, it was very light, way to light to attempt it. We've done a bit more riding in pretty nasty wet and rainy conditions.

I've been at Solfest all weekend which isn't ideal training but I intend to make up for it over the next few days. Had an hour or so in the rain yesterday and went to the beach again tonight but it was very light again.

A few of us are heading up to Tiree this coming weekend and we're super stoked about that. Tiree is such an awesome place and the forecast is nuclear so here's hoping its a good trip.

We are having another meeting tommorow to discuss plans for a slightly longer route that will take us to Silloth.

I think we're as ready as we can be right now, we couldn't have done much more kiting.

We also have some more sponsors on board for both funds and equipment. More on this as it arrives.