Elliot Rappaport has been a captain of sailing ships for the past three decades. He currently is a faculty member at Maine Maritime Academy, where he lives nearby with his wife and their dog. Elliot also sailed as a captain for many miles with Sea Education Association, an organization that offers shipboard programs in ocean science and leadership to undergraduates and high schoolers. He recently published a fantastic book called Reading the Glass: A Captain's View of Weather, Water, and Life on Ships.

Emma and Elliot were shipmates on the Robert C Seamans, SEA's Pacific-based vessel, in New Zealand in 2018. They talk about the impact of sail training, leadership, teaching, being a captain, writing a book, and weather.
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Book link: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/672096/reading-the-glass-by-elliot-rappaport/

Elliot’s top 5 weather websites:

https://ocean.weather.gov/
NOAA's Ocean Prediction Center (featured in Chapter 6!), the mother ship of marine forecasting outside of the tropics. Staffed by a surprisingly small crew of really amazing people, totally committed to helping offshore mariners voyage as safely as possible.

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/
National Hurricane Center: the tropical version of the OPC, equally amazing! They will tell you (correctly) that they are about much more than hurricanes at the NHC, the tropics are an energetic place regardless of the season. Coming out with new products all the time, and very engaged with the industry in outreach.

https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/about/
This site started in 2012 as a side-project by Levi Cowan, then a grad student at University of Florida and now a forecaster with the Joint Typhoon Warning Center. Focused on the tropics but with a worldwide aggregation of model data.

https://metbob.wordpress.com/
Bob McDavitt (aka MetBob) is the Yoda of South Seas weather, a retired MetService forecaster who now offers vast amounts of advice to people like us, much of it free. We were honored to have him visit the ship in Auckland one year, I don't remember exactly when.

https://www.metservice.com/
A fantastic bunch with the (not easy) job of keeping tabs on the weather down under.

Photos from Elliot

PRESENTED By:

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