However, this has now changed. We have written before about the Buoyweather weather forecast by e-mail service; we used it now to great effect to plan our passages and managed to do the whole trip with either favourable winds or very light headwinds. We spent time in beautiful marsas and reef anchorages when the weather was unfavourable and made north whenever the wind was favourable. Consequently, we didn't experience any of the infamous hard beats and short seas at all.

We spoke to Dan Martin, the man behind Buoyweather, and told him how valuable the service was, in the Red Sea in particular, and that during the time we had been traveling through the area we had been broadcasting the forecasts over the daily cruiser's net. As a result Dan has kindly offered to provide a free weather service for yachts transiting the Red Sea.

The service works through the SSB net (currently 8173 at 0500 UTC), which this year was run in a very professional fashion by Ian Pepe on Skive. When Skive reached Suez he passed on the task to Michael Briant on Bambola who will in turn pass it on when he reaches Suez. Hopefully the passing on will be able to continue until all the boats are through the Red Sea, both north and south bound.

The weather information is e-mailed automatically to a nominated yacht from Buoyweather each day for rebroadcast over the SSB net.

Buoyweather itself works by downloading the NOAA weather files, updated twice a day, into its database and making them available via automated e-mail requests to users who have signed up on the website www.buoyweather.com. 7-day forecasts are available for individual Lat and Long positions as well as 5-day passage forecasts. Each forecast costs only 10c.

The free Buoyweather service makes accurate weather data available to all yachts transiting the Red Sea, even though they do not have e-mail.

Next season, yachts should contact Dan at Buoyweather to make use of the service again.