Storms always hit at 3 am
currently in:  Hopetown, Abacos, Bahamas

For a cruising sailor, a dinghy is a critical piece of equipment.  It's what allows him to get to shore if he's anchored out.  It's how he visits other boats.  It's the way he gets to reefs for snorkeling.  In other words, if the cruising boat is the house, the dink is basically the family car.

Which is why we were hanging off Windom's stern platform at 3 am Wednesday, naked under rainjackets in howling wind and pouring rain, fighting to turn the dinghy back right side up.

Okay, let me start from the beginning.  The reason we're in Hopetown - in addition to it being an interesting destination that we'd not visited on our previous trip to the Abacos - is that it has a very well-protected harbor.  The entrance channel makes a dogleg, so from inside the harbor it looks completely land-locked.  The weather forecasts had warned that Tuesday night and Wednesday morning a low pressure center would pass north of the Abacos, bringing very strong south or southwest winds: 30 knots was forecast, and up to 50 knots from winds associated with thunderstorms, which could be in any direction.

On Tuesday we sailed from Baker's Bay on Great Guana Cay, where we'd spent the night.  The wind was just east of south, and we were going southeast, so we had to cover the distance in long tacks to the east-southeast and short tacks to the southwest.  But it was nicely doable, as we had only a few small islets and shoals to dodge around until the last few miles, where we had to motorsail into the building winds, nervously watching the dark clouds gather behind us.  A rain shower sprinkled us a little, but the skies didn't cut loose until after we had entered the harbor and picked up one of the moorings there.  (The harbor is so tight that there's no room to anchor.  The moorings are spaced so closely that it almost looks as though with a running start you could jump off your boat and land on the one next to you.)

It rained a few times on and off that afternoon and evening, but the winds didn't really pick up until after midnight.  And then they really picked up.  Britt and I were rudely awakened when Windom suddenly skidded sideways and heeled over hard, farther over than we'd been heeled sailing that day.  The dishes in the drying rack clattered loudly against the side of the boat, and we both scrambled to our feet and headed for the cockpit, terrified that the mooring we were on had given way or our line had chafed through, and we were free and about to smash into all the other boats on our way to a hard landing on shore.  But under us the boat twisted and straightened, coming bow to the wind again.

And the wind was howling, the rain coming down in sheets.  Lights flickered around us as everyone in the other boats got up to check on things, and every few seconds a bright flash of lightning would illuminate everything in a weird bleached-out sort of light.  After one such flash, Britt turned to me and yelled, so as to be heard over the wind, "The dinghy's upside down!"

"Oh, shit!" I yelled back.

Because with the dinghy upside down, the wrong part of the outboard engine is in the water, and engines don't like swimming, particularly not in salt water.  And all the things in the dink - anchor, oars, gas tank, seat - might have gone swimming, too, which would be a pain to recover.  And most of all, because it meant we were not going to get back to sleep any time soon, because in order to minimize loss and damage, we had to right the dinghy, pronto.

Now, our dinghy's a 12-foot RIB (rigid bottom inflatable), and weighs about 135 pounds.  Our 15-hp four-stroke outboard weighs another 100 pounds.  Add on the 5-gallon gas tank, the anchor, chain, and line, the oars and cables and whatnot, and the whole mess probably weighs around 275 pounds.  And of course the wind is still blowing hard. 

The dink had been floating behind us, tied on by its painter (a line attached to the bow) and the forward lifting line, which is set up with block and tackle to make it relatively easy to lift up to the arch davits.  We attached the aft lifting line on the dinghy's side, I hauled on them both, and Britt stood on the swim platform and hung onto the boat with one arm and used the other - and his feet - to push the dinghy over.  This makes it sound simple, doesn't it!  But it took us at least twenty minutes, and a lot of oomph from both of us, to set up and accomplish.

Once we had the dinghy righted, Britt took off the top part of the outboard case so that the copious rain would help wash the saltwater out of all the mechanical parts.  We pulled the dinghy tight to the stern so it wouldn't happen again, but the wind had definitely slacked to a less outrageous intensity, and we had no further problems (although we discovered a seam on the dodger - the canvas "windshield" that is in front of the cockpit - had ripped loose).  It turned out that at least half a dozen dinghies had flipped in the storm, and the next morning on the VHF net, one person with a land weather station reported he'd seen winds of 50 miles an hour.  Another cruiser whose dink flipped, and who also experienced the same near-knockdown that we did, opined that we might have been hit by a small tornado/waterspout.  I don't know - but it was pretty darn intense.

We had to dump the entire five gallons in the gas jug, as it was no longer gas but some combination of gasoline, seawater, and rain water.  Amazingly, we lost nothing in the dink - everything was either attached or wedged in well enough that it didn't come loose.  And once washed and dried out, the engine started up again after a couple of tries. 

It's supposed to be a calm day Thursday, so we'll (finally!) get into town and explore.  Maybe we'll take the dinghy out and go snorkeling.  We have a few days before the next cold front hits, and it's supposed to be another doozy.  So since we know this mooring will hold us in a blow, we might as well stick around.

- posted by S/V Windom @ 4/12/2007 [link]