We shouldn't have been out there. Really. But we had a 'pointment with the yard to haul our boat, and couldn't delay it. So there we were, up to our armpits in storm.
The 'pointment was set by the yard; they pull on Mondays and splash on Fridays. Al has Mondays off, so Sunday was the day we needed to get the boat some 25 miles to the yard. First down the Pungo, then upriver on the Pamlico to Broad Creek. Usually a nice broad reach, most of the way.
Sunday looked bad. Overcast, windy as all get out; we could see the whitecaps on the Pungo from our slip up in Jordan creek. The wind was from the Southeast; don't really bad storms come out of the north? Whatever.
We made our preparations to leave, and they did include listening to the weather on the WX. Small craft advisory. Well, there it was. But we'd been out in that description before, so how bad could it get? Bad.
Of course, we left anyway. 'Pointment, remember? Our first clue (which we ignored) came as we lined up for the Creek channel. The wind was so great it swung us around and we were suddenly facing our slip again. We didn't get the hint. Al brought the boat around after considerable effort and through the channel we plowed. Our engine was working hard to get us, well pretty much nowhere. Our speed was about 1.2 MPH, and that was wide open. We eventually reached the river proper, and turned slightly to starboard to head down river.
We finally looked up and saw numerous bands of gray to black clouds low on the horizon dead ahead. Not good, not good at all. Oh the naiveté of the clueless! Our speed had dropped to .3 MPH when the first band hit. The waves were around 9 feet or so, when we dropped into the troughs, we could see no shore, only water.
Al yelled (you had to, to be heard) "Do you want to head back?" I looked back at the channel, now directly downwind until the turn where we would be crossways to the wind. "Are you kidding? We'd never make it, lee shore; we'll lose the boat if we try. We're in it now, just keep her pointed into the wind."
We fell off and I yelled at Al to keep her pointed into the wind. "I can't bring her back up," he yelled, and he had to let her fall all the way off and round up on the other side. OK, that was scary. Broadside to the waves? I don't know much but I know that isn't a good presenting profile.
Anyone sitting in their house looking out at the storm would have wondered why the stupid people in the little sailboat were out in that storm, doing doughnuts. We did about 5 before Al figured out the reason. Windage. The wind was blasting in a shearing straight line, and our bimini was now acting like a weird parachute affair, trying valiantly to lift our boat's rear end into the sky. Kind of like the tornado scene from The Wizard of Oz, but in Technicolor. Al yelled for me to take it down. (Really, we were only yelling because we couldn't HEAR over the wind, we like each other fine)
Now picture for a minute me against that wind and rain standing up and removing a bimini. No, wrong picture, it was much worse. (I'd like to take a moment to shout out thanks to Bob Perry for his design of the rear railing on our boat; if we had only lifelines across the back, I might be dead right now, and wouldn't that be a different blog!)
Then the marble sized hail started. I'm not making this up! Al shouted over, "I'm buying goggles for if we ever have to do this again! It's hitting so hard, I can't keep my eyes open! I just have to take a peek every now and then. Keep a lookout and tell me if I'm staying on course." Do it again? I looked around wondering where our stunt doubles were.
The wind was getting stronger, and it was raining now so hard we couldn't see past the front of the boat. This was taking on all the signs of a true biblical thingy. I was waiting for frogs to start pelting us. At least the downpour seemed to flatten the waves a bit. Or maybe I was just getting used to them.
We needed to find the river junction, a tall tower that we could usually see from the river buoy near our creek approach. Not today. We watched the plotters and hoped the GPS had this thing pegged, although hitting the marker at .3 MPH probably wouldn't have hurt much. We saw it when it was about 15 ft away; we were already rounding it by then. Then we made the turn into the Pamlico River, and suddenly the rain and hail stopped and the wind was coming off the port quarter, so at least it felt like it was better.
We learned how to broach the boat a few times (a valuable sailing skill, I think, since I've seen racing videos depicting it) before we decided to roll the genoa up and go with the reefed main. We could see another storm band rolling across the Washington area ahead of us, but we lucked out and missed it. (Ok, we were slowed due to a foul bottom, and couldn't get there in time to experience the fun for a second time)
After tying up and walking into the yard office, William greeted us with an incredulous, " You came on your BOAT?" Apparently, just 40 minutes earlier, the docks had all been under water due to the wind and storms. He called us over to the computer, where he had been watching the satellite loop and pulled up the last 6 hr loop for the Pungo river. Seriously, it looked as if someone had shrunk a hurricane down to a 12mile diameter, and placed it where we had been traveling. I freaked. "We were in THAT?" "You came right through that," He said. "I really didn't expect to see you today." "Yeah, but..... we had a 'pointment!"