Birvidik

10 Metre waves

9 Tree trunks floating

8 80 knot gusts

7 Shredded foresails

6 Tattered sprayhoods

Sixty three knot winds

4 Sea wall breaches

3 Tons of hail

2 Opened deck joints

And a scared cat behind the PC


It wasn't a bad forecast - Southerly 17 to 20 knots with some rain. And we were snugly tied up in a marina. Feeling smug and blasé Bob gave a quick turn around the deck, gave the lines and fittings a cursory once over and proclaimed everything satisfactory and secure before retiring for the night.

Hah!

We were woken at about 4 a.m. by the wind getting up and it deteriorated steadily from then on. The wind was from the South, blowing over our stern and the single stern line holding Birvidik off the concrete quay was bar-tight. The sky darkened further and the wind increased, howling through the rigging and throwing the boats about in all directions.

The bow was getting worrisomely close to the quay, a situation further complicated by the fact that the wooden buffers attached to it had rotted away, leaving a large, rusty steel bolt protruding 30 cm in the direction of Birvidik's hull. Bob crawled heroically onto the foredeck with the large bow fender, blew it up, positioned it between the bow and the quay and scuttled back into the cockpit.

The rain fell in torrents and the wind continued to increase. It was now blowing at about 45 knots (Force 9). The Southerly wind had a long fetch and had built up large waves pounding straight onto the shore and the marina breakwater. The boats were now rolling so much that the fenders between them were being rolled out, leaving the hulls to bang and grate against each other. Just to exacerbate things we had a large, rusty steel boat next to us which was threatening to give us a good hiding. We had to go out and reposition the fenders about every ten minutes.

The wind continued to increase, now accompanied by thunder and lightning, which grew steadily closer. Suddenly the wind fell to nothing - we were obviously in the eye of the storm, still surrounded by threatening black and purple clouds.

While we were standing in the cockpit, savouring the unnatural calm, there was a loud bang, just like a rifle shot and the boat rang with vibration. Completely disorientated we looked round, trying to identify the source. Then there was another, closely followed by a staccato of more, which steadily increased to a torrent as hailstones the size of eggs clattered down. The kinetic energy in these hailstones was immense and the noise was deafening. We couldn't hear each other even if we shouted at close range. The decibel level was so high that we had to cover our ears or it hurt. We stood there helpless, hoping the Perspex and toughened glass in the wheelhouse and hatches was strong enough to withstand the battering they were receiving. The decks and pontoons were 20 cm deep in hail. Our newly acquired cat completely freaked and skedaddled below to hide in the space behind the computer at the nav station.

Looking afterwards we could see the damage wrought by the hailstones. External instrument sensors had been shattered, the plastic windows in sprayhoods were shredded. A large polycarbonate roof onshore ended up looking like a pepper pot. We got off fairly lightly, with just our lifebuoys and man overboard recovery gear pitted and with chunks missing. Street lamps were shattered and the orange crops devastated. God knows what the hailstones' terminal velocity was, but I suspect they could have inflicted serious damage on an unprotected head.

Then the wind, thunder and lightning returned with a vengeance. It climbed to 50 knots (force 10) and then to 63 knots. At sustained 64 knots and above it is rated hurricane force 12. Huge waves were now bearing down on the shore and marina breakwater. Waves thundered into the breakwater and crashed over it, and water swept across the quays and poured into the marina, which by now had considerable waves of its own, although these paled into insignificance compared with the monsters sweeping past the entrance on their way to taking large chunks out of the town sea wall and promenade.

The electrical activity eased slightly, and just as we were thinking that it was starting to moderate, the sky turned an evil dark yellow-green and all hell was let loose. The thunder and lightning were right on top of us, with nasty similarities to The Unpleasantness at Mourtos and the wind climbed even further, screaming through the rigging and throwing boats about like lottery balls. Several boats lost their foresails, which were torn unfurled by the wind and flapped to shreds within minutes.

There were a series of gusts which were measured at between 70 and 80 knots before the piece de resistance, a gust which screamed in over the starboard quarter. Our inclinometer shows us the amount of lean up to 35 degrees from the vertical. It went right past the stops and still the boat continued to lean more and more, we were knocked almost flat on our side, unable to do anything other than hold on and hope we didn't get caught under the hull of the next door boat or end up with our masts entangled. This did, in fact happen to one of the boats, a 45 foot Bavaria, which caught its capping rail on the next door boat. When the two boats righted, the shear force lifted the Bavaria's deck away from its hull, leaving a large gap.

Slowly, the gust eased, Birvidik returned nearer to the vertical and we could resume moving about and panicking. Over the next two hours things slowly returned to some semblance of normality and the cat tentatively tip-toed out from behind the computer and began to reconsider the wisdom of its current choice of lifestyle.

The heavy rain and hail brought large amounts of flotsam down rivers and roads into the sea, including the marina. The water was thick with mud and covered in a deep layer of tree trunks, twigs and vegetation, which confused the local dogs, who jumped blithely onto it thinking it was just an extension of the devastated land around. Yotties spent many a happy hour pulling confused and disorientated dogs out of the water before the marina staff finished the laborious task of pulling all the flotsam out by hand using garden forks.