A Big Blow and Lessons Learned
23 May 2021
• Hamble Point Marina
by David
English weather is notoriously influenced by low pressure systems which often track NE and cross from the Atlantic thru the middle or the north of the UK. Since winds rotate counterclockwise, this typically results in strong westerly winds in the south of the UK where we are.
A day after we arrived in Hamble we saw one of those lows approaching on our weather charts, and the weather forecast was pretty nasty. We checked our lines and fenders, but generally felt pretty secure since we were tied up to a well built dock in a sheltered marina. Well, it turns out that no matter how sheltered your marina is, 40+ mph gusts are pretty tempestuous (pretty bad, i know) on a sailboat. In the middle of the gale, the wind pressure on the mast rocked the boat enough to make almost feel like we were at sea. At one point, we went out to tighten some of our dock lines but they were so taut that we would have lost control if we had tried to change them. We doubled the critical ones, but sure wished for a re-do on the original tie up. Then we looked at our "securely" rolled up jib. The wind was starting to work its way into the space between the rolls, threatening to unfurl the sail , making an incredible racket and potentially damaging the sails. We tried to tighten the furling line... no dice. Again, nothing to do but cross fingers. Later our bimini, the canvas cover over the cockpit, started to oscillate violently with the winds. We started to try to take it down, but the canvas flogged so badly that we decided it was better to try to leave it up and support it with some extra lines, which improved the situation somewhat.
Two days later the storm had passed, and Ithaka was intact. Our preparations were good enough this time, but the storm was a reminder that the important work of storm prep comes before the wind ever picks up. Tighten the jib, take down extra canvas, make sure the lines are perfect, review emergency procedures... We will undoubtedly end up doing this for storms that never arrive, but that's ok.
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