Life is like a box of chocolates – Forrest Gump got that right, certainly as far as sailing weather is concerned. Four rowers were rescued 250nm west of the Scillies thanks to getting caught in a geriatric hurricane that smashed their 9m boat in two. The same low pressure system threw us a bit of wind yesterday off its coat tails, and a lot of rain overnight, but now looks to be going on a kind of anti-clockwise square search of the Atlantic for the next week, filling all the while, before finally flopping and dying across the Channel area on Thursday.

The implication: someone’s nicked all the good things out of chocolate box and left us mere scraps of wind for racing, it would seem. Furthermore today’s cloud cover will mean a cooler day and hence less chance of a sea breeze. That said, there is about 8 knots out of the south-west in the central Solent at present, so who knows what might happen on gloomy Monday?

Much will depend on the occluded front currently over us, which is slowly making its way out to the east. It should be clear of the area tomorrow, but in the meantime the Skandia Cowes Week race officers have yet another tricky call to make, as indeed does the event’s official forecaster Chris Tibbs.