The big and small weather

Ship: Johnny
Date: Thursday, 6th Feb 2025
Position: 22°22′ N, 085°04′ W
ETMAL: 152 nm
Total Distance: 7,593 nm

The great weather, for some the best thing on watch, for others the worst. You’ve maybe heard about it before in the Johnny News or in some daily report, but as far as I’m concerned, there’s never been an exact description of the process of making the great Weather on a normal watch.

Today, I’m going to cover that for you. Also, I’ll explain the small Weather and the content of the “Bridge Position” or “Flötentörn.”

When you are on watch, one of the tasks you can get assigned is the “Flötentörn,” which can be, on the one hand, a thirty-minute break or the job of doing the great or small Weather. The easier of the two is the small Weather: you’ve got to keep the logbook updated.

Drawing the position in the current map

The logbook

With the current position, speed, course and some weather information: Air and water temperature, air pressure, whether (cloudy, rainy, or sunny), the humidity, the dew point (DP) and the wet bulb temperature (WB). It sounds complicated, doesn’t it? It is actually kind of simple: There are only two devices (plus some nautical computers in the bridge, but you’ve only got to copy the data on the screen).

First, the Psychrometer (I am not kidding, it’s actually called this way) for air temperature, humidity, WB, and DP. By the way, in the past, the wet bulb temperature was measured by a thermometer with a wet bulb being attached to a string and hurled around in circles.

Nowadays, it’s measured differently, but the name stuck. To use the Psychrometer, you hold it up in the wind and shadow until the shown temperature doesn’t change anymore, which takes roundabout 30 seconds. Then you just copy the numbers.

The Admiral

Second of all, the “Admiral” for only the water temperature. This one’s a little more complicated, but I’ll try to explain. You hold the rope that holds the instrument and lower it just above the water, where you swing it back and forth to drop it in the water as far to the front as possible.

As soon as the device has swum back to the point where the string is tight again, you pull it out of the water and repeat the process twice more. Then you’ve got your temperature.

The whole process of the small Weather, to cut back to that, takes about 10 to 15 minutes and has to be done every hour.

Next, let’s talk about the great Weather. It has to be done every three hours at 0, 3, 6, and 9 AM as well as PM, but UTC, which currently means, for example, that it has to be done at 3 PM UTC, which equals 10 AM boat time. We also don’t write it down (anymore) and just write everything into a program and send it via email to the german Weather Agency (Deutscher Wetterdienst, DWD), who use it for their weather forecasts.

The application to enter the great Weather

The Great Weather includes the same stuff as the Small Weather plus some way more detailed cloud observations, the ice accumulation (currently none), the past weather and the visibility. You could also send stuff about wave and swell, but that’s voluntary and kind of complicated, so we don’t do that.

For the cloud observations, you determine the height of the current clouds (low, medium, high), their type, their amount in the sky and the height of the lowest clouds. The past weather includes the amount of clouds, type of rain (if any), and whether there were thunderstorms.

The visibility is either plainly guessed or determined by the visibility of nearby boats. Altogether, the whole process takes about 20 to 30 minutes.

That’s it! Thank you for reading until here!

Here are the

Greetings:

Vera: Hey, ich lebe noch! LG an alle und vielen lieben Dank für die viele Post! Mama, ich wollte Dir aus Costa Rica schreiben, es sind aber meine Postkarten verloren gegangen 🙈

Olivia: Hallo Mama, ich hab‘ heute den ganzen Tag an Dich gedacht (an euch alle), sogar an den Emil 😁 obwohl ihr mir mega gefehlt habt und ich so weit von euch weg meinen Geburtstag verbracht habe, war es ein unglaublich schöner Tag und ich bin richtig dankbar!! Ich drücke und vermisse euch ganz dolle – Bussi 💯💋