Hurry up and wait

Such is the life of a sailor planning for a long passage.

In 2026, even with advanced computers and AI, weather forecasting is still unreliable. To be fair, the system is complex and hard to model well. At best, forecasting is "decent" one or two days out.

We are planning a passage that will take a minimum of 4 days up to Bermuda. The next few days have no wind at all. So we are looking farther into the future, near the limits of what the models will forecast, and well beyond what they can predict reliably.

Obviously, we don't want to set sail and head into a storm with high winds and rough seas. Where and when will the storms pass through? We may not know until we see them approaching.

There's a good chance that another storm front will roll off of the US and head out to sea toward Bermuda in the next week.

Will it go north of Bermuda? Will it extend south to the Bahamas? Will it have peak winds of 45 knots? Or will it be just in the lower 30s?

Do we need to go north to try to catch the winds, or do we need to stay south to avoid the worst of them? Or, more likely, do we just stay here and wait for this system to pass?

The weather models say different things on different days. We keep looking and hoping to find a weather route that puts us in good wind, avoiding areas of big waves.

At the moment, it's looking like we need to stay put about a week longer than we had hoped.

There are far worse things than being trapped in paradise. But we do want to start making our way north and east; I have a limited amount of time that I'm available to help them sail across the Atlantic.

The boat is ready, nothing needs to be repaired. But the longer we sit here, the more opportunities there are for something to break.

So we hurry up and wait.