Consulting the Heavens . . . and a Computer : Chris Bedford’s Forecast Often Makes Conner’s Day

For nearly a week this month on the America’s Cup course, the wind blew at no less than 20 knots and at times as strong as 28.

The wind in their hair, salt spray in their faces, Dennis Conner and his crew were loving every minute of it, for those were ideal conditions for their big, blue boat to be racing New Zealand’s fiberglass KZ7.

But a disquieting warning kept coming from Chris Bedford, the Stars & Stripes weatherman: “Let’s get this over with. This isn’t going to last.”

Sure enough, the day after Stars & Stripes eliminated the Kiwis by winning four of their five races, a gentle, warm wind was blowing the flags along the waterfront toward the sea.

The Kiwis had called two days off in the series but couldn’t stretch the time long enough to survive until their kind of conditions arrived.

“Our weatherman didn’t make my life any better when he informed me that it’s the first time in 13 years here that the Fremantle Doctor had blown 20 knots on six consecutive days,” syndicate chief Michael Fay said a few days later.

Bedford knew that Stars & Stripes was pressing its luck. Nobody will ever know if an earlier change in the weather would have made a difference, and nobody around Stars & Stripes cared to find out.

Bedford had one eye on the races and another on Cyclone Connie, which would blow past northwest Australia and draw all of the weak, warm air out of the southwest interior, destroying the sea breeze off Fremantle and with it, perhaps, Stars & Stripes’ prospects.

The day after the last race, Bedford stood out on the Stars & Stripes dock, with a thick cloud bank to the east and “mares’ tails” cirrus clouds over the sea toward Garden Island to the west, indicating a major change in the weather. An offshore breeze was blowing hot air in from the desert.

“There may not be a sea breeze today,” Bedford said. “And if there is, it will be pretty light.”

And one day late for the Kiwis. Bedford takes no credit for producing it, only for predicting it.

“It’s skilled guesswork,” he said. “Weather forecasting is a really strange science. I only started to realize this the last couple of years.

“Basically, you’re trying to outguess God. It’s not easy, and God always has the final word.

“Most meteorologists are humble people--probably the most humble people on the face of the earth--and I’ve been humbled a few times here.”

Bedford, 22, was fresh out of the University of Michigan with a degree in meteorology last year when Conner recruited him for Fremantle, where weather is the primary consideration for all sailing plans.

“Since I’m relatively cheap, just got my degree and didn’t know any better, I decided to come down here and work for Dennis,” Bedford said.

He is paid “room and board and a little salary, just enough to pay off my student loans.”

Bedford works with Lee Davis, who was Conner’s weatherman in 1983 at Newport, R.I., but he could not devote full time to the campaign this time. Together they spent 2 1/2 months building a computerized data base fed by three years of weather information from buoys spotted around the America’s Cup course.

Before a race starts, the sailors need to know three things about the wind--how strong it is, from which direction it’s coming and at what time it will be blowing--so they can select the proper sails and plan tactics.

“Most of my input would be in sail selection,” Bedford said. “Some goes into strategy, especially if you’re expecting a big wind shift in the middle of the race.”

Conner has preferred sailing on the left side of the course.

“Two reasons,” Bedford said. “The breeze tends to be a little stronger on the left side, and the breeze tends to (shift) to the left.”

Each day, Bedford said, “I can punch into the computer the kind of day it is and it looks back through the three-year file and picks out all the days that were similar. Like today, I had 10 days to choose from, and found some days that looked very similar to today and used that as one of the inputs to my forecast.

“The other major input is a numerical model (computer). It’s physics. You put in the initial conditions--the wind speed, the vertical profile, the temperature--and it applies basic primitive equations (that) produce a sea breeze. You get a forecast (for) five-minute intervals through the course of the day.”

But Bedford also has learned not to trust the computers at certain times.

“None of the models is perfect, but now that I’ve been down here for three months I’m able to use some of my experience. For instance, today the models were predicting 23- to 24-knot winds, and I could tell that it was going to be much stronger, so I predicted 27 to 28 knots.”

It blew 27 to 28.

“So far, we’ve been within 1 or 1 1/2 knots on speed and maybe 10 degrees on the direction,” Bedford said.

Bedford seldom deals directly with Conner but with navigator Peter Isler, tactician Tom Whidden, sail loader Duncan Skinner and John MacCausland, “our eye in the sky.”

Skinner needs to know which group of backup sails to load on the tender, Betsy, and Stars & Stripes itself. MacCausland is in a helicopter, checking the current conditions. Isler talks Bedford’s language. He also has a meteorological degree.

“We have some interesting discussions,” Bedford said. “Sometimes he questions my conclusions, which is good. It makes me re-check to make sure I’m right.

“Most sailors find this stuff pretty boring. They just want to know how hard the wind’s going to blow.”

Precisely, in February.

“We’ve run a race model based on what the wind does in February and, say, how many races we will win if we are faster than Kookaburra in everything over 20 knots . . . (or) 16 knots,” Bedford said.

“I’m not allowed to talk about those results, but I can say it looked very good.”

What can be expected in February at Fremantle?

“You either get heavy days or light days--nothing in the middle--and that can be a problem,” he said. “Usually, the light days come in stretches of two, three, four days at a time. Then the heavy days tend to come in stretches.”

Some of the old-timers along the Fremantle waterfront would scoff at Bedford’s scientific approach. They claim they can predict the weather by watching the clouds and the behavior of the birds, and any fool knows that a hot easterly means flies.

“I have a fly factor in my forecasts, too,” Bedford said, laughing.

“Another thing, I can sit in my office and see right out here and know when the breeze is going to come in because all the sea gulls land right out here. It’s not very scientific, but experience is a very good forecaster.

“But I sort of got turned off to the fishermen. Lee came down here two consecutive Januarys and went out on the water with fishermen. He said their accuracy rate was 20%.”

Bedford had never been on the water in a sailboat until he joined Stars & Stripes.

“They asked me to go out because they wanted me to get wet,” he said. “They’re very understanding. They understand that sometimes you’re going to be wrong. I had a very tough November. It was very light.”

Stars & Stripes anticipated strong winds for the second round and lost four races when it came up light.

“I was not set up to predict a non-sea breeze day and I got caught several times,” Bedford said. “One of the races I got caught was the Azzurra race. I told ‘em the breeze would come in at 18 to 20 knots. Well, it finally came in, but it wasn’t until the last beat.”

Meanwhile, the otherwise hapless Italian entry led by as much as 1:55 as the wind dipped from 12 to 5 knots before building to 18. Stars & Stripes won by 37 seconds.

“It was a tough time at dinner that night,” Bedford said. “Dennis sat down next to me and said he thought the Fremantle Doctor was a hoax.

“In many ways, it could be a hoax in the sense of media over-hype, but I told him, ‘Just wait until January comes and it will blow.’ I hope he’s happy now.”