SQUALL AT ANCHOR 50+ KNOTS

 I've been out traveling for the past few weeks and so have not posted anything in awhile. But, here is a video I took while cruising in the Exumas when a squall came through one morning. It did not last long but, long enough to rip apart the dodger which you can see flapping at the top of the screen in part of the video. The boat behind us also had it's dingy flip over with a brand new outboard attached:

RIDERS ON THE STORM

I spent most of January cruising in the British, U.S. and Spanish Virigin Islands. Even though the Jonas Blizzard/Nor' Easter that hit the United States east coast last week was 1500 miles away. My cruising trip in the Caribbean was affected by it's formation over the Atlantic. The easterly winds we had been enjoying since we started sailing on January 12th suddenly started to veer out of the south. As shown in the video below. The X on the video shows the approximate location of the boat I was on:



I was feeling pretty good as I first heard of the storm approaching the northeast area.   I had recently left the northeast to spend a few weeks cruising in the warm Caribbean to escape part of winter. I did not expect the storm being 1500 miles away for it to impact my travels on board. But, when the winds switched to the south and started to feed into the storm the waves also picked up. When the reefs along Culebra  were hit by waves it made for very poor visibilty for snorkeling for several days. Though on the plus side we did have a nice sail over to Fajardo from Culebra. Though it was a sobering lesson on how powerful these winter storms can be.

OCTOBER CHANGES: Wind and windage

October is a month of change here in the harbor on the Isle of Long. Boats start disappearing from dock slips and morrings. Sails come off of boats and on some boats the masts also come down. At least they don't fall down but, are laid on deck so the boat can be moved and stored in some inland location. Yep, lot's of changes happening around BIANKA.  The taking down of the mast on a sailboat before it's pulled can change things quite a bit especially if the boat is put back on it's mooring to await hauling out for the winter. I observed this the other day as two nearby boats had a close encounter with the change of tide. One of the boats had it's mast laid on it's deck the day before which changed the amount of windage upon it. This gave the currents flowing underneath the boat more sway in how the boat lay at the mooring. Meanwhile, the boat on the next mooring still had it's mast and was affected more by the wind. The result is when I looked up at one point the end of the mast of the demasted boat was poking into the cockpit enclosure of the fully rigged boat:

Luckily, it appeared to be just high enough to make it over the lifelines and did not appear to be hung up on anything. I kept watching hoping I did not have to make an intervention. Which would have been difficult in the conditions since I only had a dingy with oars and the wind was picking up. In a few minutes the boats had separated:

But, only for a few minutes. Soon the currents and winds resumed their battle and the boats were once again in close proximity to each other. But, not in any danger of getting hung up as before:

Eventually, things got back to normal and the collision danger passed. The next day I woke up from a nap hand found that the boat with the stepped mast had been removed from the mooring eliminating any further chance of the two boats bumping into one another. Just something to consider this time of year when the wind and windage of the boats can change and mysterious damage happens.

YOU DON'T NEED A WEATHERMAN

The unstayed mast of BIANKA whips around pretty good. So good that the wind anemometer on top seemed to fail every other year. So I got rid of it and sailed by the feel of the wind on my cheek for a few years. Which worked fine though there were times I would have liked to know what the wind speed really was doing with a little more accuracy.  So this year I bought a cheap  handheld Anemometer.

It works pretty well and is small enough to keep handy in the cockpit when my curiosity on the wind speed is heightened. Another reason I bought it was to try and calibrate the amp readings for the 48 volt Marine AirX wind turbine to the wind speed. It's Pretty accurate but, being a cruiser even ballpark is fine as far as I'm concerned. So during some recent windy days I used the Anemometer to come up with the following readings on the wind turbine amp reading. Then using a P Touch Labeler made labels for the readings. Just another tool to use that will give me a rough guide when it's time to reef or just gauge the wind speed:

  

PURPLE RAIN

Looking at the 50 knot wind speed probabilities this morning showing the Isle of Long with a 100% chance of having 50 knot winds is not pleasant to see but, of course not unexpected.

 

I have the Prince song Purple Rain playing in my head at the moment. I'm not a big Prince fan and I can't really express how I feel about Irene at this point. I've been on in BIANKA sailing in gale conditions and she did well by me. What I don't know is how she will do attached to a mooring in those same conditions. It is going to be a long day.

BLOG UPDATE 9:00 AM : Checking on some buoys in Long Island Sound looks like the winds have mostly been a steady 30 knots with gusts to 45 or so. Looks like tides are about 4.5 feet over prediction.  Not good but, not terrible either. I hope those numbers go down from here as the storm comes ashore. Things seem to be going in the right direction though. My optimism is rising.

BLOG UPDATE 12:46 PM  Checking the buoys shows the winds at Execution Rocks out of the north and only gusting to 35 knots. While further east the buoys are still gusting to 50 knots and out of the south. So it looks like Irene is moving on. My cell phone has not rang and that's good news too. Though I'll probably have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out how BIANKA fared before I start doing the happy dance.

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AW SHUCKS!

I was hoping this weekend to take one final cruise with BIANKA for the season to the annual Oyster Festival in Oyster Bay Long Island. But, the winds had a different idea:

Twenty to thirty knots pretty much on the nose. No thanks, I think I'll pass on it this year.

I should have known better.

During Hurricane Earl I noticed I saw that the maximum gust on my Taylor Weather station read 75 knots. Now I don't really believe this happened. But, I wanted to see what other boats in the harbor had seen. I tried contacting them on the VHF but, seems nobody had theirs on. I usually keep mine on when I'm on board. You can get some useful local information or even entertainment by listening. But, since I could not contact anyone I decided to take my morning swim and head over to the two story seventy foot motor yacht anchored next to BIANKA and ask what they had seen during the storm. I had been in the cockpit keeping an eye on this behemoth motor yacht during Earl. Because  if it dragged it would be coming close to my boat. I could see the glow at the helm area from all the electronics screens it had on board. Surly they had an accurate take on the wind speeds during Earl. As I swam closer the Captain was putting out the cushions on the rear deck. In our gam I asked him what kind of winds he had seen during Earl. "Don't know I have no wind indicator on board." was his reply. Well, so much for that at least I got a good swim out of it. I was fooled by all the fancy electronics and antennas , satellite dishes located on the motor yachts radar arch. Silly me I should have known they would not have had a wind speed indicator on board.

SPRING LIES

Yesterday ushered in the first day of spring here on the Isle of Long. A temperature of 71 degrees Fahrenheit made for a perfect day to head to the boatyard to start getting the boat ready for the new season. The winter thanks to El Nino had been snowy, wet and cold in these parts. So much so that I only made a few trips to the boat over the winter to just check on things and not work on any projects. The warm temperature yesterday made me want to put on my sailing shoes and wish the BIANKA was already in the water so I could go for a nice sail on Long Island Sound. That is until the sea breeze showed up:

What started out as seductive warm spring afternoon turned into a chilly reminder around 1 PM. This is what happens when the southernly sea breeze winds start blowing over water with a temperatures in the forties reach the north shore. But, I was still glad to see that the sea breeze was still doing it's thing. Which often makes for a delightful afternoon of sailing in these parts during the summer. Still nice to have spring here again and ole sol starting to warm up the waters.