Captain Adrian McCourt joined AdA at the beginning of 2025 as Chief Engineer bringing a wealth of experience with him including 18 year of reporting storm activity in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico.
Adrian will continue to provide a daily weather watch bulletins for the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico during the wind season, which is a free service, distributed without restriction and there is an open invitation for this to be circulated to friends and colleagues who wish to be added. Adrian holds extended forecasts in utter contempt.
He doesn’t trust long term weather predictions and nor should you. He spent far too long at sea up to his knees in green water, being slung around like a messman’s mop and trying to keep his breakfast down while somebody behind a distant desk assured him that he was in the doldrums and should get the deckchair out.
Eighteen years of this has taught Adrian that he is no smarter now than he was when he dodged storms for a living, but he does have some personal rules of thumb which still hold good. In the winter North Atlantic, a 24 hour forecast is probable, 48 hours is possible, 72 hours is guesswork and 96 hours is utter nonsense. To a degree, this can also be applied to tropical Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico cyclone tracks. His other tip for committed insomniacs who are interested in the weather at sea.
Listen to the UK Met Office daily forecast in the summer sailing months and subtract two points from the Beaufort wind force to get a true picture. All his predictions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Ada Underwriters Ltd.
Please feel free to contact us if you wish to Subscribe. The Bulletins can be found on the following LinkedIn Page https://uk.linkedin.com/in/capt-adrian-mccourt-mnm-7a61b444 or emailed directly to you.