Bad weather story
On Saturday, we took part in the Hillsboro Inlet to West Palm Beach Sailing Club regatta (Lake Worth Florida). We left our dock Friday Morning and headed up the Intra Coastal Waterway to stay the night along side our friend, Peder, Catalina 36, 'Dalecarlia' in Pompano Beach. The trip was uneventful and we arrived at Peder's place while he was in the process of cleaning his boat's bottom in prep for the regatta. There were 22 boats registered to participate. We were in the Gunk Hole class as we really don't race, but the event was a great excuse to sail up to Lake Worth.
Saturday Morning, Peder appeared with an offer for morning coffee, but I had just poured my 2nd cup of coffee and was going through the process of getting the boat ready to sail. His dock is only 3 miles from the Ocean and just 3 bridges. I put my coffee mug down by the Port side dorade while I released the Main sail Halyard - promptly forgot about the coffee.
By 08:15 we were ready to head out, Peder & his crew were ready too. So we headed out, slow, it was near low tide and he had warned me about an obstruction on the South side of the canal entrance from the ICW. Peder should have warned me to stay near the middle of the entrance, as there was some shoaling on the Northern corner of the entrance. Yep, we went aground - soft sand - we know how that feels after previous soft groundings. We were able to slowly move off the shoal and catch up to Peder who had passed us on our Stbd side. At the Hillsboro Inlet bridge, there were at least half a dozen club boats waiting for the bridge to open, then we all passed out of the inlet, some boats peeling off to raise their sails before going out of the inlet.
We totally screwed up the start! Our class was 2nd to sequence through the start gate, each class being 5 minutes later. We crossed the start line just before the last class started - 20 minutes after our start - as I said before, we're not racers and don't normally stick to a schedule. We're Cruisers!
There was very little wind, 'The Rabbit' had his Spinnaker up, but it barely filled as he headed off shore to catch the Gulf stream. We opted to stay inshore where we had 2 knots of current carrying us to the North. Almost all of the other boats headed out to the stream where the current would be somewhere higher, but at the cost of having to head both a couple of miles East to get to the stream and then a couple of miles back to get to the finish line. As we would move a lot slower, the extra speed of being in the Gulf Stream didn't seem to valuable to us.
So we quietly, slowly, almost monotonously, crawled up the coast and our ETA at the finish line was about 16:30 according to our GPS Navigator. Of course, it started to rain, that fine drizzle that soaks everything but was barely reason for donning our Foul Weather gear. As always, we had our life jackets on and the Jack Lines were set just in case we needed to go forwards to adjust anything.
The 'Catalina Motor Yacht', one of those dinner cruise types boats, crept up on our stern, we could see them on our AIS before we could see the boat. I called the skipper to ask if they could see us on their AIS, this would be our first confirmation that our new AIS Transceiver was transmitting. They called us back and confirmed they could see us, they even replied pronouncing our boat name correctly, it's displayed on AIS receivers, along with our Speed, Course over ground and some other info about our boat.
'Catalina' motored off towards Lake Worth and by that time we could see Dalecarlia and 'Gratitude' a Hunter 27' both of which had gone out to the Gulf Stream but were now heading back inshore.
The wind had picked up from an earlier 5 knots at 140º off our Stbd Bow to 12 knots. As per our sailing plans, we started to reef. Two reefs in our Jib and One in the Main. We were now doing 7 knots GPS, not shabby!
I was thinking through the race results: Our rating was 186 seconds per mile, Peder's was 196 spm, and Gratitude's was 228 spm. With a race distance of about 30 miles, Gratitude could finish 21 minutes after us and still beat us. Peder could finish 5 minutes after us and still beat us. Both were closer than that, Peder not so sure, but pretty close.
All of a sudden, the wind instrument went crazy, showing the wind changed direction by nearly 90 degrees and ratched up to 20 knots. I looked over to Dalecarlia and saw him heeling hard and spinning around to starboard and thought 'What the heck is Peder doing?' when WHOOSH! we did the same, the wind spiked to above 39 knots, at least that's the biggest number I saw when I had a chance to look at the Instrument! The boat heeled hard over to Port and dipped the rail well below the water line, wave constantly bursting over the side and occasionally over the cockpit combing.
Peggy was hanging on for dear life! Both arms wrapped around the cabin top winches and feet firmly reaching for the port side seat, trying to jamb herself into position. All the while I was trying to see the instruments through fogged up glasses and holding the wheel to stop us bearing off the wind which would have put us beam to the wind, that would have been even worse.
We've been in squalls before, they typically have lasted maybe 10 minutes max, so I told Peggy to hang on, it's going to calm down in 5 minutes or so. It didn't! More than 20 minutes later, we agreed that we should try to pull in the remaining Jib and put the 2nd reef in the Main sail. I didn't think we could lower the main because it was under such stress with the high winds.
I helped Peggy bring in the jib, step by step, we worked together, Peggy jacking the furling line and me taking the line slack up on a cleat. Then Peggy easing the jib a bit more and then more struggles with the furling line. Peggy was pretty worn out by that time, so we took a breather till we tackled putting the 2nd reef in the Main. All the while, the Port side is dipping in and out of the water, still getting occasional floods into the cockpit, but the drains emptied it pretty quick. We were both soaked through even wearing our rain jackets. The wind dropped to below 25 knots, and we tackled the Main sail. Peggy dropped the main halyard about 5' and secure it. Then she passed the 2nd reef down haul line to me and I pulled the sail down to the 2nd reef position. Peggy secure that line in it's line clutch and we did the same for the 2nd reef out-haul line. It was not a perfect reef, but there was a lot less sail up than with just a single reef.
After about 30 minutes, the wind started to ease below 20 knots. I raised the head of the mainsail in order to clean up the reefing, it only needed to be raised by about 8 inches. That made the sail look a lot more orderly, and then the wind died, I mean it dropped so much we were only doing 1 - 1 1/2 knots downwind towards the finish line. Our ETA went from 16:30 to 17:45, time to drop out of the race, so we started the engine and called the race committee to announce we were dropping out.
With the engine running, we dropped the mainsail and headed to the finish line which was now about 7 miles away. I tided up the running rigging lines and we did our best to relax and ease back down from the high stress of the squall. We heard other boats call in to drop out or announce they were ok. We called Dalecarlia and they were ok, minor damage - bimini split and mainsail jambed half way down. Gratitude was ok too.
We motored in over the finish line. The Palm Beach Sailing Club boat 'Paparazzi' stayed at the finish line until we passed it, we were the last boat in.
None of the Gunk Hole boats officially finished due to the storm, but we all got safely to the anchorage opposite the PBSC marina. Dalecarlia was offered an overnight mooring ball and we agreed to tie up along side them. We kept clear until they had completed their mooring connection and then I prepped for going along side, getting fenders deployed and lines set.
After healing, probably as much as 50º to port, having water wash all along the side deck, in winds that, according to others, was over 50 knots, anything loose in the cabin was all over the floor including the seat cushions. So it was with amazement that, as I was setting the fenders on the Port side, I found my Coffee Mug, laying within inches of where I had left it before leaving Peder's dock 10 hours earlier! Go Figure!
Once we were all secure and ready to go ashore for the After Race Party at the sailing club, we hailed the tender for a ride to the club. Ken, one of their sailing instructors, quickly arrived and took us to the club, I think we were the last to arrive.
We sat with a few of our club members and enjoyed the club's excellent dinner and the much needed Cold Beer!
When it came to the awards, the master of ceremonies announced that as none of the Gunk Hole class had finished, and that the club had made 3 really nice Trophies, they would have the 3 skippers tell the story of their experience of the storm and award the trophy according to the applause rating of the audience!
Enough Said!
Our First Racing Trophy
Even if we didn't finish!
See you on the water!
