Following the Action in St Moritz

St Moritz Bad (St Moritz Spa) from by the Blu26 boat moorings in St Moritz Dorf (St Moritz village), beneath Badrutt's Palace Hotel. Webcam images are taken from the opposite side of the lake, with the webcam located just to the left of this picture, in St Moritz Bad. The lake is used extensively for rowing, due to the light winds and flat water. Image copyright Anne Hinton/www.annehinton.com

by SailRaceWin

The Swiss weather service, MeteoNews provides links to Webcams around Switzerland, one of which is located on the shores of Lake St Moritz (St Moritzersee in German, or Lej da San Murrezzan in the local Romansch language). The Webcam images are updated at half-hourly intervals and provide good coverage of almost the entire lake area, which is only about 1.5km long and 800m wide.

The location of the St Moritz Webcam is in St Moritz Bad (St Moritz Spa), directly opposite St Moritz Dorf (St Moritz village) where the boats are moored, beneath Badrutt's Palace Hotel. When the local thermal, down-valley, breeze, called the Maloja, is blowing, the windward mark is in the vicinity of St Moritz Bad (i.e. to the left of the webcam image).

For anyone in New Zealand wanting to stay up and follow the progress of the BlackMatch boys through the racing Sunday in St Moritz, the webcam images, together with updated scores on either the local St Moritz Match Race organisation webpage, or that of the World Match Racing Tour, provide the best means of doing this.

Sunday's weather forecast in St Moritz is not good, with rain expected all day, although becoming lighter in the afternoon. As the morning Webcam images show, in St Moritz, at 1,850m above sea level, the weather is wet with temperatures of only about +5C at 1100 (local time).

Cloud tends to shut off the local down-valley breeze, so the racing is likely to be towards the opposite (northern) end of the lake from St Moritz Bad on Sunday, in light winds. The 1130 webcam image shows the Blu26 boats heading upwind in that direction (i.e. to the right of the image) and downwind towards the webcam location.