A Bit of Wind

They say that cruising is 95% boredom interspersed with 5% intervals of terror. Well, last Saturday evening, we were tested by a little bit of terror. A frontal weather system swung through Cape May around 9 PM where we were comfortably anchored with about 10 other sail and power boats. Wind speeds continued to steadily rise from 15 to 20 to 25 to 30 knots…and I watched the live satellite radar image on my computer as the line of pretty yellows and reds (severe weather) marched towards our position.

I had marked our boats position on the chart plotter and set it up to draw a nice red dot on my chart every 20 seconds reflecting our current position as determined by GPS. As the boat swings back and forth on our anchor, it draws a nice red smiley face on the chart plotter as the boat swings about the anchor on the bottom. I could also watch the current position of the other boats anchored around me with my radar. Remember, it’s now pitch black and Kim and Emily are already in bed down below.

I started to see other boats dragging their anchors in the brief flashes of lightning and watching their positions on the radar. I quickly glanced over at my chart plotter and noticed a few red dots drooling down from the smiley face marking my boat too. I called Kim to come up as I started the engine. I could slowly run the motor in forward to take some tension off the anchor. It was working fine and I might have kept that up until the front passed by, except by now there were more than 6 boats dragging and I was terrified of having one drag into me and, even worse, get our anchor chains tangled. We quickly raised our anchor and I motored out into the harbor channel well away from the other boats who were now madly racing engines back and forth trying not to hit one another.

The front passed by within 30 minutes and we safely re-anchored in lighter winds using the chart plotter and the radar to find a safe spot in the harbor. There was considerably more room now since one sailboat landed on the rocks, one sailboat was forced into some abandoned pilings, and two other boats with tangled anchors were driven aground in the shallows. Kim and I were thankful that Emily slept through the entire ordeal.

It was calmer the next morning and we motored out of the Cape May canal and had a calm passage up Delaware Bay that has a reputation for being rough. I guess that we were tested enough for a few days… I really hope so. The entire crew wants warm weather and some more of that boredom we all signed up for.

Tom

Currently anchored in Chesapeake City waiting for another front to pass through…tonight!