You don’t have to be planning a swim to get used to watching the Dover weather.

Maybe you have friends over there. Maybe you’re thinking about the distance future. Maybe you’re just a Channel junkie.

First there’s the Shipping Forecast for the immediate future. Of course, you’ll also want to understand it.This what the pilots use. Only time spent in Dover will really demonstrate how even this can be wrong or at least the timing can be out by 12 hours.

You’d probably also want a longer range wind forecast.

Maybe you want to know what it’s like out in the Channel right now, just to convince yourself the pilot made the right decision, so you check the Sandettie. Or if you think you’ve made the wrong decision, you might want to watch AIS. Not to mention the SPOT tracker for the pilot boats.

In Dover, it’s all about the weather.

Time to remind you all of this again.