I’m full in the haters camp of people who say “you can outrun the weather”. A particularly large sailing YouTube influencer has stated on his channel multiple times about being able and capable of outrunning the weather. It’s unmitigated craziness.
As sailors we are beholden to Poseidon’s vagaries, and you can’t outrun the weather if there is no good weather to go to. Take Ian into account. Massive storm. Highly watched. The models didn’t agree until within 48 hours. It could have impacted anywhere within 1000 miles of coastline! You must make the decision to run 96 hours our more out with a forecast cone that is huge! I put some videos of the storm tracks on Instagram showing you couldn’t’ have gotten it right if you tried to run.
Run up the east coast? If the wind is going the right direction. If at the exact same time you would not have had to deal with 6-meter seas on a 6 second period created by Fiona. As to speed of hurricanes. Fiona as it went north up the east coast went so fast that the hurricane hunter aircraft missed the eye the first time through.
Let’s be honest here. Freighters can’t always run from the storms. Miranda was a freighter caught in the oversized storm of Ian. They had nowhere to go because the port captains for the entire east coast called status Zulu halting all port operations. I listened to the conversation between the USAF hurricane hunter that finally found Miranda in the thick of Ian’s outer bands.
What port are you going to go when nobody is going to let you go there? Sure. Not all weather is a hurricane but there are very few weather events as analyzed as a hurricane. We start tracking them as they blow up in Africa. There are things we know about hurricanes like the difference between the clean and dirty side of a hurricane (or any tropical low). The hurricanes wind fields are HUGE! The sea state changes are even bigger across the water.
As to the big difference between the sailing influencers and the cruisers (I’ve written about that). The influencers are motivated by social and commercial standing regardless of the consequences. That’s why influencers fall off cliffs, get eaten by sharks, and sail across the north Atlantic with children in the middle of winter.
Sailing influencers who never sailed and now within a tiny niche community of boaters they have opinions listened to by relatively the masses. Consider the sailing influencer who had never sailed, bought a boat, and a few years later is offering advice on sailing. Writing books on how to sail. Creating the literature of the current generations understand. The influencers are giving advice counter to centuries of experience.
When you think about MACIF the racing trimaran and the new IMOCA 60 class of foiling monohulls they are examples of boats meant to go fast in the roaring 40s, furious 50s and screaming 60s. I would point out in the southern latitudes they are running in high wind speeds that are cyclones without being tropical. They are basically jumping from low-to-low riding the wind angles. If you’ve been inside an IMOCA going fast in seas it’s part submarine, and all marbles in a can as far as crew comfort. I look at systems like the new PredictWind slam factor and the general comfort elements (new graphs introduced in the last few months) to tell me what a particular boat will feel like in the same weather.