"BrianH" writes:

We are not discussing the bora in Italy; let me remind you of your words, "
there are even scary freaky winds in the parts of the Adriatic that I live
by. However they do not appear without warning, ever." So I'm pleased to see
you are admitting your error - that winds in some areas can appear without
warning.

He didn't admit that 'error', and neither do I. Yes, winds falling off
mountainsides can hit very hard very suddenly - I remember one
occasion sailing along gently on a very nice day with just the jib up
and suddenly being knocked down to mast horizontal by such a wind. I
was caught out on that occasion because I was not paying
attention. But it is literally impossible for such a wind to 'appear
without warning'. To get that sort of effect you need a very violent
movement of a very large amount (at least thousands of tons) of air,
and if you are paying attention you will see it coming. The new air
must be significantly different (usually much colder) than the air it
replaces, so will have different moisture and dust content and hence
different trnsparency, leading to different apparent sky colour and
different visibility, even if you do not see the different colour and
texture of the water surface as it approaches (which, if you are close
inshore, you may not).

Whilst the original poster made some silly comments, which, to his credit he
seems to be reconsidering, I see no need to call him a liar and use
inaccurate statements to justify it.

I don't think he's a liar. I think he's very inexperienced, and would
benefit either from going to sea regularly with someone more
experienced for some time, or, alternatively, stumping up his money
and taking a course.

--
(Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
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