Joé Seeten and his router Denis Theunynck visiting Mercator

Mercator forecasting is taking a new life with Joé Seeten

Joé Seeten (picture T. Martinez)

The skipper's Mercator visit on February 5 & 6th 2004 has confirmed cooperation between the two teams Mercator Ocean and Joé Seeten.

A meeting has been held at Legos (Geophysic and spatial oceanography research center) to show to the audience how much this collaboration is successful.

Mercator uses : multiples and varied

After a Mercator historical overview, Vincent Toumazou, the head of user's service, has resumed all the possible uses of Mercator products : sailing races, oceanographic campaigns, oil slick, commercial uses such as offshore or fishing industry and european (Mersea), (Roses), or international (Godae) cooperations.

Oceanic forecasting : a profession is bornt

With Didier Palin, one of the oceanic forecaster, the Mercator forecasting maps are alive. The experience of the weather forecast is here applied : human interpretation of model outputs, with respect to the knowledge of the oceanic area and of the model behaviour. This is translated in terms of "oceanic weather" : the current veins behaviour, their direction, their velocity, their evolution, their strengh related to the win stress, the thermic fronts position, the eddies moving, etc.

Mercator surface currents forecast near the 2002 "Route du Rhum" arrival and the boats locations. Joé's boat, Arcelor Dunkerque, is number 21, a few hours before she won its third place.

Yacht Routing : a multidisciplinary technique

Joé Seeten's sailboat, Arcelor Dunkerque (picture A. Besombes/Alcyone)

At Littoral University, Denis Theunynck is up to date in the routing science. The aim is to improve the racing ship performance. To do that, skippers and routers have been supplied for a long time with american pilot charts giving wind and current probabilities per ocean square. This is the basic information. Since computer modelling, routers have been getting familiar with weather forecast models and then with swell models. The boat characteristics are also very important to compute the best compromise between the cape and the velocity for a given weather.

Mercator in the router's kit

Ocean models are now taking place in the skipper's and router's complete information set and Mercator is at a good place. It becomes a common noun. Joé Seeten has taken benefice during several races, such as 2002 "Route du Rhum" where Mercator - the skipper said - allowed him to mount the third place of the podium. Good currents forecasts allow a 10% velocity benefit, which can represent 1.5 to 2 knots velocity, under certain conditions. This can make the difference.

Skipper formation : two years are necessary

The router insists on the period which is necessary to educate the skipper (two years racing are necessary to a skipper to learn the routing science), Joé talks about the difficulty at sea to be informations receptive. Staying peaceful and making use of informations fluxes as best as possible. With more and more hard demanding sponsors, to associate with Mercator is a bonus, the skipper says. Today, 8 racers are listed in the Mercator's user's service, but Joé knows that for one officially informed, twenty can take benefit of the information. So we can see that Mercator is getting familiar to the offshore race community.

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