Rio 2016 - Fresher breezes expected inside and outside on Day 3

by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com NZL on 10 Aug 2016 Stronger winds are expected for the third day of racing in the 2016 Olympic Sailing Regatta in Rio de Janeiro.

Two of the fleet scheduled to race outside on the Atlantic Ocean course off Copacabana Beach, while the 470 Men and Women will race inside on Guananara Bay.

Predictwind, the renowned wind, weather and course routing software developed by 1992 Olympian Jon Bilger, is forecasting winds gusting to 25kts on the Copacabana course and gusting to 23kts inside the harbour using a location at Niteroi, opposite the Sugar Loaf.

The breeze is expected to be up by mid-morning, however on the water observation points displayed in Predictwind, show a lesser wind strength.

From Sail-World's location in Rio de Janeiro we can report the breeze rose as predicted by PredictWind and seems to be increasing in strength.

Decisions are expect late morning as to what action, if any race officials will take regarding to day's race schedule, with racing to be staged in Lasers, Laser Radials, Finns, 470 men and Women and RS:X Men and Women.

The third feed in the data below is GFS one of the standard weather feeds from North America, which shows a lower windstrength in the two areas than the two Predictwind models.

The image below shows the two feeds developed by PredictWind for its forecasts. In this high level 50km model we can see the wind at 1300hrs is stronger offshore m but is slightly less off the Copacabana Beach area - not caused as geographical consideration of the many of the rock formations of varying heights and sizes are taken into consideration by PredictWind.