Shipping Forecast excluding the header line, has a limit of 350 words—except for the 0048 broadcast, where it is increased to 380 to accommodate Trafalgar's inclusion—and has a very strict format. It begins with "And now the Shipping Forecast, issued by the Met Office on behalf of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency at xxxx today." This format is followed quite strictly, although some continuity announcers read out the actual date of issue as opposed to the word "today". This is followed by gale warnings (winds of force 8 or more on the Beaufort scale), if any (e.g., "There are warnings of gales
Shipping Forecast in Jasper Fforde's debut novel "The Eyre Affair" are named after Sea Areas in the shipping forecast. Charlie Connelly's 2004 book "Attention All Shipping" (Little Brown: ) describes a project to visit every sea area with any land, and to travel by air or sea over the others. For his project ""The Shipping Forecast - an Artist's Journey", which began in 2015, Troon-based artist Ian Rawnsley plans to travel by sea through each of the sea areas and create a painting inspired by each, to raise funds for Macmillan Cancer Support. In March 2017, Peter Jefferson recorded a reinvented version