April Transatlantic weather

[KarinaGW]

Desperately looking forward to upcoming Liberty TA in 2 weeks. I've been looking at the weather in Europe and it looks like it'll be in the mid-ish-70s. I know what nassau is like at that time of the year.

 

What I don't know is what the weather at sea is likely to be. Yes, I know the Atlantic can change in a heartbeat...that the weather can be anything dependent on the weather gods. But, for previous cruisers, is there a general sort of temp I can expect? Not that I will be kept from the hot tubs no matter what the temperature is, but am trying to decide how many (if any) shorts/capris to pack.

 

Thanks.

[Vikstar]

I'm waiting patiently to replies to this thread too as we are heading off on the Grandeur Transatlantic in April :o

 

I'm wondering whether it gets cold on the ship at night on deck.

 

Hope you have a great trip.

[kernow]

We did the Liberty TA last April. We had pretty good weather all the way, on the sea days I would say it was high 60s/low 70s, some days it was very windy out on deck but there were some people on loungers every day.

Most people including me wore summer type clothes all the time, just take a light top for the cooler days if you go outside.

 

We loved the TA so much we have another one booked for November, have a great trip.

 

Julie

[AussieVisi2r]

Previous cruses have shown that it does get cold at night.

Cold enough for Ice bergs!

:D

[ninnau]

Desperately looking forward to upcoming Liberty TA in 2 weeks. I've been looking at the weather in Europe and it looks like it'll be in the mid-ish-70s. I know what nassau is like at that time of the year.

 

What I don't know is what the weather at sea is likely to be. Yes, I know the Atlantic can change in a heartbeat...that the weather can be anything dependent on the weather gods. But, for previous cruisers, is there a general sort of temp I can expect? Not that I will be kept from the hot tubs no matter what the temperature is, but am trying to decide how many (if any) shorts/capris to pack.

 

Thanks.

We did a TA twice. Both times we had beautiful weather. The seas were like glass. I will look to see if I have any pictures. We were on the Independence and the Navigator.

[earn]

We were on the Liberty TA last year with Julie, and we thought the weather was great. However, there were quite a lot of people we spoke to who had been on other TAs and they thought our weather was the bottom end of average, as it was quite windy. We were in swimwear, shorts and T shirts every day. The weather in Tenerife is usually good, and Cadiz and Malaga should be OK too. Might get a bit cooler in Valencia and Barcelona, but we had beautiful weather there last year.

 

Anyway, we loved it so much that we are on this year's Liberty TA too. Have you popped by the Roll Call for the cruise? We have quite an active group with a good few activities orgainised.

[mjldvlks]

We were on the April 2009 crossing aboard Independence from Fort Lauderdale to Southampton with Ninnau [Hi Ninnau -- the picture in you signature appears to be a picture of Independence during our stop in Madeira -- is that right?].

 

As she says, the weather was pleasant the whole crossing. It got a little cooler and overcast the last sea day after we turned north from Vigo, Spain to Southampton. But the seas were pretty calm the whole way. As I recall, the flowrider was in use the whole crossing. The Captain was doing a good job of setting his course to avoid a storm that was chasing us across the ocean [or vice versa]. There are web sites that have weather for major cities world wide [which will include most if not all of your ports]. It sounds like you have used those already. There are also websites that have weather for the open ocean [my favorite is Passage Weather]. Unfortunately, these sites [at least the ones I have seen] do not have historic weather [i.e. what the weather was last year on a given date]. But you are close enough to departure that watching that site will give you some idea what to expect. Also, you can take the weather for the two ports on either side of a sea leg and interpolate what the weather is likely to be in between. But that gets pretty imprecise when you are dealing with a sea leg of 6-7 days.

 

I still say TAs are the best value out there. Our Independence TA is our favorite. Good times and great people on the big ship.

 

Dennis

 

 

Here is a picture from one of our sea days [although they are in the shade, you can tell the folks on deck are in shirtsleeves]:

 

 

Here is our last sea day from Vigo, Spain to Southampton as we crossed the mouth of the Bay of Biscay [cloudy, but calm -- we may have had some rain that day, don't recall]

 

[Sequim88]

We did Miami to Southampton in 2008 and a couple days out of Bermuda were pretty windy but only a couple days had any ship motion at all. Temps were mid-60's and one day we had cool drizzle for part of the day. Otherwise like cruising on a lake. Last couple days touring Paris and then in London post-cruise were a heat wave with temps in 80's.

 

Next TA in a few weeks we have a professional meteorologist in our Roll Call and he has advised that temps will likely be low-70's to start and then 60's as we get north into the Med. - a bit warmer in ports due to land heating. He is tracking a storm across the North Atlantic now that is stiring up 18' seas but this should be gone within a few days and hard to tell where next storm will pop up. My guess (as a non-pro meteorology hobbyist) is with strong storm systems crossing North America from west coast and eventually crossing Atlantic as low pressure systems it may be more active this year - especially farther north routes. But the Captains are good about dodging the worst when they can.

[KarinaGW]

We were on the Liberty TA last year with Julie, and we thought the weather was great. However, there were quite a lot of people we spoke to who had been on other TAs and they thought our weather was the bottom end of average, as it was quite windy. We were in swimwear, shorts and T shirts every day. The weather in Tenerife is usually good, and Cadiz and Malaga should be OK too. Might get a bit cooler in Valencia and Barcelona, but we had beautiful weather there last year.

 

Anyway, we loved it so much that we are on this year's Liberty TA too. Have you popped by the Roll Call for the cruise? We have quite an active group with a good few activities orgainised.

 

Glad to hear about the weather from all these lovely responses. I had kind of mentally planned on packing for spring/summer with a sweater or so along for good luck. Happy to have this confirmed.

 

I have been to the roll call. Not as active as I would have liked as the past several months have been somewhat crazed on many fronts. See you there!

[Tucker in Texas]

We've done ten TA's going both ways. I pack two long sleeve, knit turtleneck tops and plan to wear slacks once we are across the pond and it gets cooler. Sometimes not cool enough to even wear them so two dark ones that can be worn multiple times will be enough. I seldom wear one more than twice and, sometimes, only once.

 

The rest of the time--capris/shorts/slacks, short sleeve knit tops. Husband takes a fleece lined windbreaker and I take a light weight jacket. Only once were we "stung" with not being prepared and that was in the fall of 2010 when in Toulen they had an abnormally cold snap with temps in the 30's! Still, by layering, we did o.k. other than I would have killed for a knit cap to cover my ears (lol).

 

Booked on a Baltic cruise in the spring of 2011, I bought some long underwear. Only wore them once and that was in Helsinki and could have gotten along fine without them by layering.

 

I hear more "complaints" from people who didn't bring enough warm weather clothes than from those who wish they had bought more cold weather clothes.