2.1. Wind and leeway
We define the leeway (windage) of an object to be the drift associated with the wind force on the overwater structure of the object as measured relative to the 10 min averaged wind measured at 10 m height (or reduced to this height). This coincides with the meteorological convention for measuring surface wind and is consistent with earlier work in this field (Hodgins and Mak, 1995). It is observed that an object moving under the influence of the wind will diverge to some extent from the downwind direction due to balance between the hydrodynamic lift and drag of the subsurface area and the aerodynamic lift and drag of the wind.
The empirical relation between leeway and wind speed presented here is based on field work carried out by or compiled from other sources by the U.S. Coast Guard. The empirical coefficients are summarised in Allen and Plourde (1999). A total of 63 different search leeway categories has been compiled (discussed further in Section 3.4, see also Table 1). Leeway field experiments endeavour to determine the relation between the wind speed and the leeway speed and divergence angle, L and Lα, or more robustly, the downwind (DWL) and crosswind (CWL) leeway components, Ld and Lc (see Fig. 1). The latter parameters are more stable to directional fluctuations at low wind speed and are therefore preferred. To achieve this, it is necessary to combine wind measurements from a nearby buoy with GPS measurements of the motion of the object (over 10 min intervals) and current measurements of the slippage (the object's motion relative to the current at a certain level, discussed below). The empirical coefficients for leeway speed and the divergence angle listed in Allen and Plourde (1999) were converted by Allen (2005) into downwind and crosswind components of leeway as functions of the 10 m wind speed. The decomposition into downwind and crosswind coefficients are implemented for the first time in the operational model described in this work.