So, when the rest of the world is Christmas shopping on the first weekend after payday, what do you do with 5 club skippers, a retired physics teacher and assorted other RBYC members?

Well, we had all booked onto Simon Rowell’s Weather for Sailors course, and so, with slight trepidation after flicking through the 112 page course manual we packed into a nice warm classroom in Theale Library.

Simon is a fun, entertaining and extremely knowledgeable trainer – he promised, and delivered plenty of tea – and also a thorough and challenging course into global weather patterns. We learned some new words, like cyclogenesis – Peter Hurley’s particular favourite - and by the afternoon the concept of the coriolis effect was tripping off our tongues! We stopped talking about pressure being measured in millibars and talked about measuring pressure in hecto pascals, and we learned how to interpret synoptic charts, and not just the surface pressure ones, but also the upper level charts.

At lunch time David Maxwell checked out the local pub, while the rest of us checked out the local sandwich shop. This was an occasion where alcohol was definitely not going to help!

Just when we thought we’d got to grips with mid latitude weather, we moved onto tropical weather. I now know which side of the hurricane, or tropical revolving storm to used the correct terminology,  to choose. There is a dangerous semi circle, and a navigable one – as both involve winds of 85 knots, I have carefully filed this information in my brain, and committed to being in the pub at this point.

So, all in all a challenging and fascinating day. This group arrived with thousands of miles of sailing experience, and plenty of experience of weather! Heads were scratched, questions were asked and we all came away with a huge amount of new knowledge. Simon was reassuring, “Weather is easy – its just little parcels of air moving around the globe!”

So, if other RBYC members would be interested in this course, please let Tanya Robinson know, and I’ll happily arrange another course, if the demand is there.