Chubasco—the anatomy of a storm

This is what a storm looks like when it's breaking down. When it's pumping you don't turn on the computer and take a screen shot...

Last night we got the weather we’ve been hoping to avoid. When we pulled down the satellite images of the Sea of Cortez there were massive areas of convection on the mainland side, which were moving our way. After making our own forecast of, ‘we’re going to get smacked’ we checked Stan’s Chubasco forecast by SSB: 

“Tonight on the Mainland there is almost continuous convection on the beach from Mazatlan north to Kino. All of this convection is expanding and moving to the west. I don't think the convection will survive the trip across the Sea, but it might. So I would say there is a chance of a Chubasco all along the Baja peninsula. If it were me, I would go to bed early and get up at 1am local time and see what it looks like.”

Stan seemed a bit more optimistic than we felt, but we prepared the boat for a blow and I headed to bed. Just before Evan joined me we got a call by VHF from a boat anchored across the Sea in Guaymas—he let us know they had just been nailed by a Chubasco and that it was coming our way.

Around 11pm we were woken by chilly rain drops that felt as big as robin’s eggs. When a storm is strong enough, it blows out big rain drops, not the little ones associated with a typical approaching rain. Evan popped his head out the forward hatch and discovered that not only was the sky bright with lightning but a wall of rain was headed our way.

We both jumped up and went through the motions of preparing for a storm—I turned on the motor to relieve stress on the anchor in the gusts. And Evan closed hatches, got our instruments on, and lowered our lightening grounding system. Then he took over the wheel and I put as many of our electronics as would fit into the oven and then put the overflow into the pressure cooker—basically creating a low-tech Faraday Cage. (Check out this great article on lightning protection for tips and ideas.)

By now we had a steady 25-30 knots of wind. By Chubasco standards this was a small blow. What we had though was a lot of nearby lightning and cracking thunder. I took solace in the fact there are some tall mining structures near us (and a very tall mast on S/V Third Day), making it unlikely we’d take a direct hit. As the wind let up, the heavy rain continued—it looked like all that would happen in this blow is we’d get a good boat clean.

post-chubasco lightning--not as dramatic as mid-chubasco lightning, but we were busy then

 

After an hour, conditions eased and the storm seemed to have passed. But we were still seeing lots of lightning out to sea. When we fired up the computer, we discovered all we experienced was a very small cell that had broken off the main one—and that the huge area of convection that stretched from the mainland and ¾ of the way across the sea was still to come. Our guess was if that cell didn’t break down, we would be hit much harder within the hour.

I called the other boats in the anchorage to let them know the bad news (so they wouldn’t be caught off guard by a second storm). Then we waited, and waited. I dozed off and Evan later fell asleep while reading. The storm dissipated and as much as, ‘and nothing happened next’ doesn’t make for good story telling, it does make for good cruising…

In Control

If you read anything about cruising, one of the terms that tends to come up over and over is “radio net” or just “the net”. The term refers to the short and long-range radio programs that happen on VHF, SSB or Ham radio. The nets are designed to help cruisers share relevant and interesting information. In the case of the VHF nets, the focus is on orienting cruisers to a new town, while the long range SSB and Ham nets keep us up to date on weather and let us keep track of our friends.

The cool thing about all of the nets is they are run by volunteers. This is a pretty impressive feat when you consider that a cruising region may have as much as an 80% turnover in boaters from one year to the next. The only way this can work is if everyone who can, takes an active role.

Last night Evan jumped into the net control position on the Southbound Net. We’ve been planning to participate in one of the SSB nets for a while—but it wasn’t until Meri, from Hotspur told us that the Net Control party was well-worth attending (and only people who have done net control get to go) that Evan made the leap.

Basically the role of net controller is a host position. The net control facilitates the agenda and makes sure only one boat is talking at a time. I might be biased but I think Evan did an awesome job for his first effort (and based on her Dad’s good showing Maia is eager to give it a try at some point.)

While we don’t tune in to the net every evening we have found they can be a a great social outlet if we've been on our own for a bit—we’ve first ‘met’ several boats over the radio and began building friendships before even meeting each other IRL--in real life (as they say online).

Nets change times and frequencies every so often but fairly current information on which nets are going on in Mexico can be found here: http://www.docksideradio.com/west_coast.htm

The Southbound SSB net is currently:

Time: 0055  UTC

Frequency: 8122 kHz Upper Side band; then switch to 4054 kHz at 0115  UTC

Weather Briefing: at 0100  at 8122 kHz with Don Anderson,  except for Sunday night

Communication

Part of untying the docklines and heading out to sea is the idea of disconnecting from society and living more simply.
It's a great concept.
And one that I'm ignoring.
90% of my stress while we've been outfitting has come from the question: How will I stay in touch? It's not simply that I would miss reading the Sunday New York Times online (although I would - I love the Modern Love essay...) my job as a freelance writer requires that editors are able to contact me easily (usually so they can ask me questions that were already answered in the 3rd paragraph of the story...)
I'm also really social and the idea of not being able to call a friend and share my latest angst leaves me cold. Our old system from the last boat, where we had all our mail sent to Ev's parents then mailed out enmass when we were approaching a reliable address, isn't going to cut it this time.
While modern technology does offer us a bunch of options - most of the easy ones (satelite phones and iphones) come with a price that we can't afford.

So this is what we are doing. Obviously we won't know how well everything works until we test it out for a while, but I am currently online - several km from the nearest wifi source:

Ham/SSB radio - We have a Pactor modem, which means when we are out of wifi or cell range we can get email over radio waves. It's slow (think early dial-up) but it will do the trick for basic communication. ("I think the answer to that is in the 3rd graf.")


Netbook and cheap cell phone- I really wanted an excuse to buy an iphone. But when I emailed with someone who used his in the South Pacific, and who incurred a massive bill, and then followed up with the NYT tech editor we came to the conclusion a less elegent (and less fun) solution was best. So we have a cheap, unlocked cellphone that we buy SIM cards for in each country. And we have a Skype number with a NYC area code that is forwarded to the cell. Friends call NYC and the call reaches us in Bora Bora. With the netbook we just roam around until we find free or cheap wifi, which we find by using a hotspot detector or we buy wifi aboard.
Super duper antenna- Look up, look way up. The antenna and high-power USB adapter that is clipped on to the lazyjacks is currently picking up a good signal from a harbour about 3 km away.

Which means I am sitting at my desk reading the New York Times and drinking my morning coffee (organic/fairtrade) and pretending I'm still my normal urban self, while fishing boats plow past, seabirds screech and the wind sings in our rigging.