Post Irene

We had a little excitement yesterday afternoon. The wind shifted around to the west and picked up again. I think the wind was actually just as bad as when the hurricane passed earlier, but with the bay open in that direction, the wind and fetch produced a bit of chop and 3-5' waves at about a 1-2 second interval. It was a rough ride for about 12 hours.

In fact, it was so rough my snubber parted and I was laying just to chain for most of it. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure that really wasn't a big deal, but at the time I was afraid I might lose the boat -- we were only a few hundred feet off the coast. From that direction, I was only being held with my 35# CQR and 150' of chain. The other one was loose, so I pulled in a bit of rode to keep it from fouling, but it still ripped off one of the buckets I was using as a sea anchor.

I ended up pulling the other bucket out, freed the line, and added a second heavier snubber to the chain on deck. Since I've only got one cleat up there, I wasn't able to do much, and had to let out more of my original snubber than I wanted when I adjusted the lines -- I just couldn't hold it.

The additional length might or might not have contributed to the chafe that parted the line, but luckily, I'd already added the second one by the time it failed, because that's what held. I did add a third one in place of the original, but couldn't do much with it because at that point, the waves were periodically coming over the bow and spraying me, which made it difficult to do anything.

To make matters worse, I'd removed all my sails, so if I'd lost the anchor, there's nothing I could have done. It's possible a boat could have gotten to me, but I'm pretty sure she would have ended up on the beach. We were just too close. Needless to say, I'll never do that again.

Another mistake was moving my fuel jugs into the cockpit to reduce windage. With the rough ride, as rough as I've ever experienced (picture the bull at Gilley's), some fuel must have leaked and I started smelling it. That's as close to seasick I've been in a long time. Not bad enough to keep me down, but certainly bad enough to affect my decision making. So, that's another thing I'll never do again. I'll also replace one of the containers I know leaks.

Zoe watch:

She did great, however, she did come on deck a couple times when the wind started to pick back up. I had to stop several times and make her go back down below, but once it got rough, she found a small cubbyhole and hid. In fact, I came down a couple times and couldn't find her.

It's not a big boat, and I'm always worried about her going overboard, so you can imagine a moment of panic when I couldn't find her. I even scanned the water around the boat once thinking she's jumped in to swim ashore. She found some creative places up in the forecastle (pronounced foc'sle) nestled in with all the spare gear.