Yachting Monthly’s May 2006 issue contains suggestions of favourite websites sent in by readers. Here’s the full text of what they had to say:

I’m living near Antwerp and sailing in the Netherlands on the
Oosterschelde and North Sea.
For two years now I regularly check website
http://theyr.net. The forecasts are very precise and most of the time they are correct.
Daniel Dieltiëns

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml?world=5005
Nice weather article Feb YM. I like the 5 day forecasts on the BBC site www.bbc.co.uk/weather. I put in my town (Torrevieja, Spain), which is not very big, and hey presto!
Peter Haden
Yacht Fortuna

Following up on your excellent article on weather forecasts, I wonder if you have seen http://theyr.net/. It’s a site which covers the US, the Atlantic and Europe and is presented in ENGLISH. Winds are shown by direction arrows with colour coding for Beaufort scale
strengths. Also available on the page are temperatures, predicted
precipitation, etc. I have foundit useful around the Ushant area of France. I found it correlated reasonably well with Met Office website information, together with my own
humble observations of the prevailing conditions!
For another ‘take’ on the weather, a few years ago, I was stuck in La Coruna, whilst a NE gale prevented me from sailing NE! On one attempt, we struggled to make 12 miles in about six hours, against 40 knot winds, then turned back and got back into Coruna in well under two hours – but that’s another story! I used the Met Office ‘talk to a forecaster’ service’ and found this about as good as it gets – excellent for being able to talk
through various predictions and strategies for getting across Biscay.
Gordon Ogden

Hi,
I sail in the Med for six months a year. My preferred sites are (in order of preference):
1) http://theyr.net
2) http://www.weatheronline.co.uk
3) http://www.meteo.fr
I am VERY satisfied of the routing service of www.navimeteo.it . Excellent value for money and takes into account your ability, boat, crew, etc, Unfortunately only for Med.
Roberto Cappi
Sainte-Maxime, France

Your notes in the February Yachting Monthly were very useful particularly for Europe. I have also found that www.theyr.net is an excellent site which includes 6 hour animations. But from experience Alastair Buchan is quite right to say that you really have to make up your own mind aided by a selection of sources.
I notice you did not list the Irish Met Service website in your list of
Weather Websites – for the Sea Area forecasts see
www.meteireann.ie/forecasts/seaarea.asp which covers Irish waters
up to 50km offshore and, in effect, the entire Irish Sea.
It is very useful up the UK west coast from south Wales to the
southern Western Isles of Scotland, in addition of course to the Irish
Sea and coasts of Ireland generally. Usually more accurate than the
Met Office Shipping Forecast which is fine for the big picture but lacks
the detail necessary for smaller areas.
Harry Shaw
Co Wicklow.

Thanks for the helpful article in February’s Yachting Monthly.
Two good sites are:
www.metcheck.com which gives forecasts on a three-hourly basis town by town, plus an inshore forecast by sailing areas (via “hobbies” tab)
www.theyr.net gives animated forecast charts of wind/precipitation/cloud cover/temperature.
In addition a comprehensive world-wide site, best where there is an airfield in the area as its observations tend to be from those sources is www.wunderground.com, which for those planning longer term has the advantage of keeping statistical history so that one can see probabilities of likely weather at a time and place.
Jan Manning
Pulborough

In the Feb edition you show metcheck as ‘Met Office 2 day forecasts’. Far from it, it is my favourite site with excellent forecasts up to 14 days. On the whole I find metcheck more accurate than the Met Office for land and coastal forecasts. And it’s a friendly human site. Jules Dussek

My favourite weather website is:-
www.wetterzentrale.de
But I know enough German to click on the right buttons.
Richard Idiens

Two sites I use are:
www.met.ie. This is very good for the Irish Sea.
www.theyr.net Again excellent for UK waters giving up to date wind strength and local wind direction.
Robin McConkey, via email

Two sites which I find very useful are www.weatheronline.co.uk which is a general weather site but has specific information for sailors. It goes into some detail for quite small areas and looks quite a good way ahead though obviously the further ahead the less accurate, and www.wetterzentrale.de which provides satellite pictures with overlaid isobars for a good synoptic view.
Martin Stokes

Feb YM finally reached here (Fremantle). the attached web page is from Wellington – gives a 1 week forecast for all oceans (on different pages) see home page for more details.
http://www.metvuw.com/forecast/forecast.php?type=rain&region=natlantic
Regards
Rob Campbell
“Dusky Dolphin”
Fremantle Sailing Club
http://www.aspiring.ii.net