Sailing to Pensacola

[gmerrill]

I hope one doesn't find this a stupid question. Planning on sailing from Long Beach Ms to Pensacola, Fla in May. I plan to sail for about 7 days. I sailed my Precision 23 from Pensacola to Long Beach a few years ago and it took me 2 days almost to hour. I anchored and slept at night. How would I find out what direction the winds would be blowing. Plan on sailing SSE across Ms Sound to the Gulf of Mexico then dead east to Pensacola. I will have a sailing buddy so we'lol be able to sail 24 hours if we desire to do so. I very confident in the Eclipse ability to sail a few miles offshore.

[PJ]

I use Windy.  They have an app, or you can go to windy.com.

[Floridagent]

Another is windfinder.com
//Bob

[slode]

I've used Windy for a season now and find it the best of everything I've tried.  I like that it shows gust speed independently, but just as precisely, as sustained speed in a nice form as well as pressure, relative humidity, and precipitation forecast (with actual accumulation rates) all in 3 hour increments.  it's been pretty accurate at least 1-2 days out.

[moonlight]

I'm no fan of big government either, but when you need a definitive answer for weather well we do have NOAA.  Fancy apps are cool, but they all rely on NOAA as the source of their data, so why not cut out the middle man?
weather.gov
look around
find the buoy page
you can get real time data for a ton of spots out there.
And prevailing for the gulf coast in May?  SW 5-10-15.
Or if you stay closer to the coast, it'll flip flop daily with the sea breezes