A spring in the wind

A brimming spring tide will hit the best part of four knots in the middle of the English Channel. Fourteen knots of true wind is a good sailing breeze for most of us if we’re beating. Ten will do. At eighteen knots in open water, the honest ones are reefed and wishing they were going downhill instead. Four knots of tide trundling along under still air is creating an apparent up-tide wind of four knots. Add this to a fourteen-knot true wind blowing directly up and down the tide – a westerly in the Channel for example – and an easy ten knots on the lee-going stream is transformed into a stiff eighteen when it’s flowing hard to weather. The forecast won’t mention this, nor the change in sea state, but that’s another matter…