Waiting for Round Two

I've gotten so many emails I'll try to answer everything, but forgive us if this is choppy, we're pretty exhausted. So far the skies around us are filled with thunder heads, but yesterday at this time it looked like it was clearing, so we don't know if they mean anything yet. All day the marina was frentic, people putting their boats back together, looking for stuff that was lost. We learned two boats went aground, one a family with two kids went up near the rocks (which stopped my heart a bit) but both came off safely. This despite the fact that more than half the boats in the anchorage dragged --some great distances.

Maia and I went into town and found it just coming back to life with power at 5pm. Trees were down and streets are flooded but roofs seemed to be where they should be.

What we learned:
The lessons are always the same; always be ready for anything. We neglected this a bit. Having just come in from a four-day passage we left a few things loose (and are still finding oranges, books and toys in odd locations...). We skipped the dishes, didn't bother zipping the mainsail cover and opted not to hoist the dinghy after using it. Our biggest error though was with the engines. When we came back from dinner on shore we noticed the poly line on the prop. We had a go at removing it but decided because it was small and light (turned out to be a tuna line) and had obviously been there when we motored in, that it could wait for morning to be cut off. On top of this we were out of fuel for our auxilary outboard motor.

We did do a lot of things right. We have clear decks--always. We learned the danger of flying jerry jugs and loose spinnaker poles on our last boat. We also have excellent ground tackle. Our primary is a huge aluminum A120 Spade but it only weighs 33 lbs and we always set it with as much scope as possible and in full reverse, for several minutes. It already proved itself in 50 knots. But 88 and 6' waves is quite something else.   We also checked the ground tackle when a lull came (or maybe at only 30 knots) and found the bow roller damaged and the rope rode chafing a bit.  We hadn't set a sacrificial snubber or a bridle and interestingly it was the snubbers that broke on many of the boats that dragged (several lost all their ground tackle). We were also happy to be on a cat. The monohulls were rolling in the most sickening way as the wind clocked around and in the marina the boats were knocked over so far many have damage high on their hulls and toe rails from where they hit the docks.

We also monitor weather carefully and when Evan saw the bottom drop out on our barometer (it dropped 7 mba over 2 hours) he started checking a few weather books and when a big swell started arriving he decided to pull the dinghy up.

The wind hit with a literal roar at near full force and was sustained in the high range for 30-40 minutes then dropped off to 30 or 40 knots for another hour, then hit us again with a lighter one after an hour's break. I think most boats popped anchor in the first ten minutes.

At the peak of the storm the massive noise of the wind drowned out the thunder--even though bolts were lighting up the sky all around us. We had the radio on full volume and heard frantic disembodied voices that wavered in and out. Occasionally a voice would yell that a boat was dragging onto them, then that would fade to another frantic call, now and again someone would yell a wind speed. I still recall hearing "77! 82!" and "Close your thru-hulls!".  Evan says the spray over the cabintop was very salty had a dive mask to keep his contacts from being blown out of his eyes.

Living on a boat is much like living pay cheque to pay cheque, all it takes is skimping in one area of maintenance then having a bit of bad luck and suddenly your home's at risk. Except in our case foreclosure comes with added danger. Honestly, the moment where I put Maia's life jacket on while she was in her bed then waited to lose the boat was among the worst in my life.

But we set ourselves up. Things don't go wrong on a boat because of one error. In Sereia's blog she tells an harrowing story that explains how problems can cascade until you run out of options. In our case we knocked out a couple of our options early on (we did have the staysail ready) and were fortunate that the storm came in the direction it did and that our engine held while we motored to avoid the dragging fishing boats (who were also at full throttle trying to avoid us).

8am
Woke to clear skies. Had a minor squall in the night--but just your normal thunder storm. Mostly slept through it. We learned today that what hit us was a Weather Bomb not something that is known to happen in this area, at all...
A report at Latitude 38 (had a few things off: there were still 26 boats in the morning and more than 1/2 were gone, so I'd estimate more than 60 at anchor to start. We haven't talked to more than one other boat that didn't drag. The read outs on wind speed ranged from 70-110 knots. We went with the midrange one.)

Well, Holy Crap!!

Thunder, lightening, driving rain, 88knots (101 mile per hour winds) and six foot breaking seas. That's what we just had in the La Cruz anchorage. No water spouts though--so that's good.
We're wired but ok. Our anchor held and as luck would have it we were windward of the fleet (except two 70 foot steel fishing boats that missed dragging onto us by a few meters while Evan steered out of the way...) The anchorage is unrecognizable right now. We don't know where many of the boats are. From what we've heard on the radio it sounds like a few are in the shoals. A few made it into the marina, a few motored out into open water. Very few had anchors that held.
Our options became limited with the discovery that we have a length of blue poly line wrapped around our prop. It's still far too dangerous to free it and if we start motoring to somewhere else we could loose our engine. We have chafe in one section of our anchor rode caused by when our bow roller self-destructed so at first light, or as soon as the seas have eased to make it safe, we (being Evan) will go into the water to free it. Storm anchor is on deck ready to heave over.
El Nino, you're killing me, baby...
The jet stream is way down here. I'm shaky on the details but these storms are utterly unpredictable right now and can come back up with no warning.
May be a very long night...
This may be why rum was invented.
7:30 am
We had a low sleep night. Perfect after a five-day passage. The anchorage is eerie. Before the storm we had boats all around us. Now the nearest is as though it's in a different anchorage and where there were 50 or more yesterday, today there is 25. They're spread across the bay in clusters. Discovering things like shreaded sails, lost dinghies, damaged decks. The radio keeps chirping with calls from the beach--people finding things; dinghies, surf boards, gas cans, oars and wanting to get them back to their owners before the stuff is lost to the tides.