Hell's Playbook

      Quite often you’ll hear us speaking about the weather and how moving the boat from one location to another is directly related to the weather.  The weather also plays a major factor while at anchor.  Especially if you want a good night’s sleep.  Every once in a while in the Bahamas a “cold front” will move in from Florida slicing its way across the islands.  Saturday was no different.

       Earlier in the week we started hearing reports of a cold front approaching and how the winds would clock around.  When the weather gurus speak of winds clocking around, as in this case, the winds will be from the NE then move to an E or SE direction.  The winds may continue to clock around to the S and to the SW, then onto the W and NW.  So, winds clocking around, no big deal until you start talking wind speed.  Now you have every cruiser’s attention.  For this particular cold front, the days leading up to the front were supposed to be calm.  Take for example Thursday’s forecast was  for E 5-7 knots building to 7-10 knots and Friday’s forecast was E 6-11 knots.  The weather report on Thursday also included Saturdays forecast of SW 8-10 knots clocking WNW 10-14 knots and then in the evening NNW 9-13 knots. Thursday lived up to its predictions.  On Friday, the winds also came as predicted. The Saturday forecast as given on Friday was SW 10-14 knots clocking WNW 9-12 and continuing to clock around NNW at 10-14 knots.   Yes, I know, a lot of numbers being thrown at you all at once.  Believe me, the forecast for Saturday never changed dramatically, we keep a log of the weather (wind & direction)  predictions.

        Now, here is what happened as I think of how I lived through it.  The forecast didn’t change but mother nature changed her mind, and she was very angry.  It all started around 3am Saturday morning with the boat hobby horsing (pitching – bow rising up and down) as the winds were blowing out of the SW at 15 knots.  15 knots isn’t bad except for the fetch.  The distance from the nearest land mass to our west, Andros (Bahamas) was too far away to offer any wind break, about 50 miles too far away.  This allowed the wind to really whip up the waves, as in 1-3 feet with 2-4 footers added in for good measure.  As the day dragged on the winds picked even more.  Now we are talking 15-20 knots  and gusting much more.  Wait, that’s not what the weather reports were predicting.  The actually weather conditions were twice as bad as forecast.  Our buddy boat, Short Walk,  in the anchorage  with us, gave us a wind conditions report late Saturday afternoon – 21 knots gusting to 27 knots.  Now we are dealing with waves in the anchorage of 2-4 feet with 3-5 footers to kick your ass!   

        Our day consisted of lying down in berths for most of the day.  It was too far dangerous to move about the boat.  At times, from the master suite, in the bow of the boat, I could look out to the stern and see the dinghy above the transom because the bow of Big Run was rising that far out of the water, lowering the stern.  The dinghy was on the crest of a different wave above the transom, all simultaneously.   The top of our transom is 4 feet plus above the waterline.  Let’s not forget the waves that attacked from the sides causing the boat to violently roll from side to side. It’s called a confused sea!  In a nutshell, the boat was pitching up and down and rolling from side to side at the same time.  When I did venture up to the pilothouse, I could see that we were very close to burying the bow’s pulpit in the waves as the boat pitched.  On a normal day the pulpit is 8 feet above the water.  

      Later in the evening as the winds clocked to the NW and we were protected by land mass, the boat turned into the wind with a NW heading.  And what about the waves rolling in from the west because of the westerly winds that day?  Yes, they were still rolling in from the west that evening as the  boat pointed north, and Big Run rolled side to side through the night.  Sometimes the rolls were  very abrupt, 30 degrees roll from one side to 30 degree roll to the other side. That’s a 60 degree arc! 

      The ordeal lasted about 24 hours.  This was worse than any crossing we have ever done, and the worse night on the hook we have ever had.  We survived this ordeal only because we are dedicated to this lifestyle of being full time cruisers.

      This was not a angry mother nature, this was a page from hell’s playbook.

This is S/V Short Walk on the hook being tossed during the blow.