Perhaps not exactly the burning issue of the day but got curious about it. Some references say back to the wind and other say face the wind. It’s hard to imagine a mariner going out on the windward bridge wing and tuning his back to the wind. Makes more sense you’d face into the weather. The Dutch…

That’s a classic one but please keep it to yourself. My wife and landlubber friends think I have special powers because after a life at sea, I can predict wind shifts and incoming rain.

Burgess (I’m using the 4th edition 1978) has bit on the accuracy of wind direction observations. It involves the karate chop over the compass repeater which I mentioned in an old thread. [image] The advantage of using the appearance of the sea to estimate true wind direction is there’s no need t…

This is a question of orientation. For directions on the earth using south would have been equally as useful as using north but using south has no particular advantage. North became the standard for historical reasons. Using “facing the wind” as an orientation however does have advantages. When mak…

[image] Kennebec_Captain: So why did Buy Ballot pick “back to”? He was left-handed…?

Buys Ballot stood upon the deck Straighter than a mast pole, He said “Low pressure is on my left, When the wind goes up my Asshole”. Attributed to Steve Colgate Master Sailor and my Brother-in-law.

So of course I understand that facing either way, front/back and switching sides left/right is logically the same. But one seems more seamanlike then the other. This is the passage that sent me to Bowditch to check: Bowditch describes Buys Ballot’s law, a handy rule of thumb invented by a Dutch…

This is from David Burch: If the Buys Ballot direction does not match your plot, and you checked both, then chances are you are not quite into the closed isobars. This could also be indicated by a pressure that is not dropping or dropping very slowly.

Regarding Buys Ballot’s law there is something special going on with that wind! The air flows with a small deviation. In the Northern Hemisphere the wind has a deviation to the right, in the Southern Hemisphere a deviation to the left. The cause of this is the Coriolis effect. Another formulation i…

This was Buy Ballot’s first pass at it, based on his observations. [Buy's_Ballot_0] Here’s his first statement of the law. (From here .) [Buy's_Ballot]

[image] Dutchie: the Northern Hemisphere an acceleration to the right relative to the direction in which the air is currently flowing, This is the reference used to describe directions in explanations of the Coriolis effect. It would be cumbersome to use an observer as a point of reference.…

Buys Ballot's Law - Landsman (and Meteorologist) vs Mariner - #37 by Kennebec_Captain - Marine Weather

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