The Thrill is Gone

The past few years of cruising, weather decisions have been made incredibly easy due to the entrance of the Storm weather app to the market in February of 2015. We were so impressed with it that I did a post about it, King of the Weather Apps. The Storm app enabled us to ditch a half dozen other apps because it had all the capabilities under one roof: daily and 7-day forecasts, marine zone forecasting, tropical storm warnings and tracks, a kick-ass radar, lightning, wind prediction...you want it, it had it. But like a not-so-new teenage crush, or that zippy sports car that acquires its first ding, Storm began to lose its luster. First off, the marine forecasting  - even though it was offered under a subscription - was dropped. Then, a few months later, every time you opened the app it had an ad for the new Storm Radar app. A few months later it was no longer an option, but a mandatory upgrade. As of May 23rd, the Storm app will no longer be supported and only the Storm Radar will continue.

Storm was originally hosted by Weather Underground, a service originating from the University of Michigan in 1995. Even though The Weather Channel acquired Weather Underground in 2012, Storm was released in February of 2015 under the Weather Underground name. Storm was the app that TWC was using for its forecasting and tracking. In fact, that's where I first found out about it, while watching TWC tracking a hurricane. My only guess is that they didn't want everyone else having access to the same info (and therefore not needing TWC to interpret it for them) so they released the much less capable Storm Radar app and discontinued support for the Storm app.

In the already frustrating environment of Garmin's takeover of Active Captain and Navionics, the loss of Storm hits the cruising community hard. The information is not lost It's still all out there through NOAA (since that's where all apps get their input from anyway,) but it's not in an easy-to-use condensed format. It requires much more digging, and much more internet usage to get the same information, and nearly every cruiser finds internet bandwidth to be their most valuable currency. So what are we to do?

Some have elected to purchase subscriptions to weather routers like Chris Parker. He offers a great service to a good many people and I'm grateful he's there. But for former pilots like Tim and I, who have always done our own weather, it's not an option. We want to do our own forecasting and be responsible for our own weather decisions. I've spent the last few days while we're stuck in Marathon waiting on a weather window, to research all the options. A discussion of them follows. If you have any additional information or sources that might be helpful, please leave it in the comments below.

General Forecast Information:

1. NOAA's New Experimental Forecast Chart: This is probably the best replacement alternative to the Storm App. Their new interactive map allows you to pan and zoom, and to click on your location on the chart for a detailed forecast. The chart looks like this: 
   
   
   
   You can see where I clicked on the Marathon area where we are located. When you click on the More Information link in the block, you get a wide variety of forecasting tools, charts, and maps all for your specific area.
   
   
2. Weather Underground: Still one of the best general weather forecast sites. Typical radar, 10-day forecasts, precip, etc.
3. Weather Bug: Same info, nicer layout, better radar.
4. The Weather Channel (weather.com): Almost exactly the same format and news stories as Weather Underground, not surprising since they own them.
5. Accuweather
6. Intellicast

Marine Specific Forecasts:

1. NOAA's Marine Forecast Home Page: This page gives you a wealth of information. You can get the coastal zone forecasts, the offshore zone forecasts, and the high seas forecasts by clicking on the zone block on the map. Here is the Coastal map:
   
   
   
   
   Once you click on the zone you want (in my case the South zone,) it will take you to the next page for that specific forecast.
   
   
   
   
   Continuing deeper, I clicked the Key West Zone and this is the next map:
   
   
   
   
   And, finally, I clicked on the Hawk Channel just outside Marathon to see what the conditions will be like for the next few days. Here is the forecast:
   
   
   
   
   If you click on the link in the lower right corner "Forecast Discussion," you will get a text discussion for the area which can be very helpful in discerning trends. Here is the discussion for this forecast: 
   

The same procedure is applied to get the Offshore Forecasts and the High Seas Forecasts.

The cat's meow, though, is a very cool interactive graphical forecast map for when you have adequate internet bandwidth. Using the drop-down menu in the upper lefthand corner you can get a forecast map for any of the following parameters:

Maximum Temperature (°F)
Minimum Temperature (°F)
Prob of Precipitation (%)
Precipitation Potential Index (%) experimental
Weather
Hazards
Temperature (°F)
Apparent Temperature (°F)
Dew Point (°F)
Relative Humidity (%)
Wind Speed (kts)
Wind Gusts (kts)
Wind Direction
Sky Cover (%)
Precip Amount (in)
Snow Amount (in)
Ice Accumulation (in)
Total New Precip (in)
Total New Snow (in)
Total New Ice (in)
Snow or Sleet > 0.25in LE, Prob.(%)
Marine
Wave Height (ft)
Fire Weather
Maximum Relative Humidity (%)
Minimum Relative Humidity (%)
Dry Thunderstorms
Critical Fire Weather
Severe Weather
Convective Outlook
Tornado Probability(%)
Extreme Tornado Prob.(%)
Damaging T-storm Wind Prob.(%)
Extreme T-storm Wind Prob.(%)
Hail Probability(%)
Extreme Hail Prob.(%)
Total Prob. Severe T-Storms(%)
Total Prob. Extreme T-Storms(%)
Tropical
Tropical Wind >34kts (Cumulative Prob)
Tropical Wind >50kts (Cumulative Prob)
Tropical Wind >64kts (Cumulative Prob)
Tropical Wind >34kts (Incremental Prob.)
Tropical Wind >50kts (Incremental Prob.)
Tropical Wind >64kts (Incremental Prob.)
Hurricane Wind Threat
Hurricane Storm Surge Threat
Hurricane Flooding Rain Threat
Hurricane Tornado Threat
Water Resources
Daily FRET (in)
Daily FRET Departure from Normal (in)
Total Weekly FRET (in)

There's a lot of other marine specific forecast pages and apps that you can use as well. Most are very specific in the information that they cover. Here is a list of the popular ones, although not comprehensive I'm sure.

1. Passage Weather (Free - donation suggested)
2. Predict Wind (Free or subscription), website or apps on both iOS or Android
3. Wind Guru (Free or subscription) website or apps on both iOS or Android
4. Sailflow (Free or subscription) website or apps on both iOS or Android
5. Windy (Free) website or apps on both iOS or Android
6. Earth.Nullschool.net very cool and free

Grib Forecast Apps:

1. Pocket Grib (Initial cost) website or apps on both iOS or Android
2. Predict Wind (Free GRIB viewer)

Prog Charts:

Because we have an aviation background, we use prog charts to help our forecasting. Prog charts are surface charts that span several days. It helps to see how the fronts move over the time period to understand the progression of the weather. You can get them at the Aviation Weather Center at the link below.

Prog Charts

Hurricane Tracking:

1. The definitive hurricane tracking site is NOAA's National Hurricane Center. It's also available on both iOS and Android as an app. While there's other sites out there doing it, they're all getting the info from NOAA so the NOAA Now app is the industry standard.
2. Mike's Weather Page
3. Tropical Tidbits

Hurricane Prep:

1. Boat US has a fairly comprehensive site with hurricane prep information, including an assortment of checklists and guides.
2. A blank copy of our insurance hurricane plan the year we were planning on being at two different locations over the hurricane season.

Weather Routing Services

1. Fast Seas
2. Chris Parker Weather Routing
3. Weather Routing, Inc.

Other helpful weather information:

1. How to read surface charts
2. Cloud types and their significance
3. An interesting article on the demise of the weather frontal map

Still getting there

We spent last night anchored just south of the Tom Adams Key Bridge. Manatees and dolphins greeted Kintala as the hook settled into the bottom. It was a good place and we debated staying there today since storms were in the morning forecast. Isolated though, mostly just rain, so after the fog lifted we sallied forth. Just a few hours and barely 16 nm along, it looked like it might have been a better choice to let Sally be. There was still nothing much showing on the radar, but the air felt uneasy and full of the potential for mayhem. I was pretty sure the sky was up to something that the forecast had missed.


Unfortunately there are few good places to stop along this stretch, particularly for boats that draw 5 feet. We passed one at Venice FL that was just not viable; shallow and stuffed full of hulls that had that permanent look about them. A couple of miles further along Blackburn Bay was the next chance, the charts showing just 4.9 feet at mean low tide. (Exactly what Kintala draws.)

The only thing I like less than skinny water is being caught flat footed in big winds in a narrow channel with no place to hide and no room to anchor. The hair on the back of my neck was insisting that Blackburn was the only real choice. We crept out of the channel and tossed the hook with the depth meter reading ZERO point ZERO part way up a rising tide. In Kintala that means there is 18 inches or less under the keel. It is a 1.8 foot tide. Sometime in the next 12 hours we are surely going to bump.

The first line of storms went by with gusts in the 30+ knot range and lighting falling close and loud all around. Not bad given that we were settled in and secure. It would have been a near nightmare had we been between the Venice Avenue and Hatchet Creek bridges, a place we had just passed through. At 0.3 nm long by 86 feet wide, with no docks, no space to anchor, just rocks and trees and bridges; it would be hard to imagine a worse place to come face to face with a thunderstorm.

The second wave just passed, mostly rain and thunder. The next is due within the hour and looks to be the meanest one of the day. Once it passes, rain will be on the menu for much of the rest of the night. Last night's anchorage would have been a better place to ride this out but we pushed on, so this one will have to do.

Mostly we pressed on simply to get this part of the trip over. Being in Bradenton, not getting there, has taken over our thinking. And, truth to tell, Kintala will be limping a bit when she finally gets settled between the piers. Foot sore, if you will, having been on the move, more or less relentlessly, since leaving Oak Harbor nearly 8 months ago. Along the way we have stopped to fix only the things that had to be fixed in order to keep going.

As a result, the Beast is dripping water from the inside seal on the raw water pump. (That pump is only 8 months old, and was the warranty pump for the new one that failed right out of the box. At the moment Jabsco is not very high on my list of lovable manufacturers.) The alternator bearing squeals once in a while, the tachometer has died, and the throttle and shift cables are not giving off warm-n-fuzzies while they do their thing. There is a new vibration that might just be stuff growing on the prop, but my thinking is the cutlass bearing will have to be replaced before heading out to the big once again. When the Beast is run too hard, the front seal on the v-drive dribbles brown goo onto the engine diapers. That, rumor has it, is a pretty common failure on the Walter v-drive and it seems that several decades has not been enough time for them to find a cure. (Walter V-drive has never been on my list of lovable manufacturers.)  Maybe Jabsco called Walter for a recommendation on a seal?

I would love to find and slay the small oil leak (different than the v-drive goo leak) that has eluded detection so far.

The wind instrument is dead, killed by a bird in Stuart. The stern nav light died all on its own. There are water leaks in the cabin that need plugged, a staysail furler that needs to go away, a bent jib pole that needs un-bent or replaced, running rigging that needs re-run, and the down-stay under the deck below the inner forestay has a couple of broken strands. The seal on the rudder post drips, mostly on a port tack. We need to install some LED strip lights in the V-berth, refinish the cabin sole, and get serious about some bright work inside and out. There is still only one anchor on the boat, though we do boast 200 feet of chain. A new gray water tank waits to be installed, one with a lid to keep the stink out of the boat. The non-skid needs painted and the hull has several scars from more than two years of constant cruising.  The boat speed indicator has croaked and the old GPS at the nav station, the one that tells our IAS receiver where it is, is finally starting to fade.

One might think we just bought this thing and haven't started working on it yet.

Deb will carry the load for a lot of this since I have a day job fixing other people's boats. (And spending other people's money!) Weekend's and evenings will see me up the mast or buried in the Cave of the Beast. And, to give you some idea of just how demented I might be, I'm kind of looking forward to it. Oh, I still hate my boat, and my boat still hates me. But Kintala has carried us far and hasn't killed us yet; getting her somewhere near to “right” has grown into a bit of an obsession. I want her to function as well as she looks, and I want her to look a little better as well.

The third wave went through while I was typing the above, with wind gusts over 40. Not sure how much over 40 since the wind gauge is toast, but it takes a good puff to push Kintala over on her side like that. The lightning was closer and louder and I wish there were a few more inches of water under the keel. But I made the decision to "go", and this is where we ended up.

One more day, maybe two, and “getting there” will turn into “being there”.

King of the weather apps

(Ed Note: As of May 23, 2018 the Storm App is discontinued and replaced by the Storm Radar app, a severely substandard app.. The story on why this happened as well possible replacements is in the new post, The Thrill is Gone)

By now, I suspect that there are very few of you that don't know that Tim and I are both pilots and, as a result, are complete nerds when it comes to all things weather forecasting. When you're a pilot, weather forecasting is the core of all flying decisions. It rules flying as much as it rules sailing and cruising. Since we always make our own go/no go weather decisions, we surround ourselves with all sorts of weather apps and cross-check them religiously. We've done lots of posts before about various weather apps that we use like Pocket Grib, NOAA Now, Aviation Weather, Marine Weather, Deep Weather, WindyTy and Predict Wind. We also occasionally use Passage Weather, Weather Underground, and for regular daily sit-still forecasts, Weather Bug.  So it may come as a surprise to you that we may, just may, have found a single-source weather app to replace them all.

During this week's extensive coverage of winter storm Jonas on the Weather Channel in the lounge at Vero Beach, one of the anchors just briefly mentioned in passing an app that he was using on his iPad for the show called Storm. It's a Weather Underground app, but a separate one from their regular weather app and is, unfortunately, only available on iOS at the moment. It has so much information in it that it could easily overwhelm a weather newbie, but to old pilots like us it's like opening a big stack of Christmas presents. Last night there was a whole lot of, "Wow - look at this!" and "Hey if you touch this symbol look what you get!" I told you we were serious weather nerds. So just in case you happen to be one of the aforementioned weather newbies, or just in case you don't want to spend most of a day figuring out the app yourselves, here is a tour. I was fortunate enough to have winter storm Jonas to help with all the screen details.

When you first open the app you have a page that is ready to customize, but before you do, click on the settings menu in the upper right hand corner and set your units. The settings menu is the three dots that the yellow arrow is pointing to.

After you have your units set, click on the down menu in the upper left hand corner and set your location. You can either pick a location or you can choose the follow me location. Once you set a location, the data for that location will appear in the lower section of the screen.

Next, you'll start to build the layers that you want to see represented on your page. The layers menu is the toolbar on the right side of the page.

On my page, the layers I have selected that you see in the screen shot below are:

Enhanced Global Radar, Storm Tracks, Windstream, Fronts, Severe Outlooks, Tropical Tracks, Tropical Model Tracks, Tornado/Severe Storms, Tropical, Winter, Marine

There area other choices available to you as well, so poke around and try different things.

On my main map page, the red pie-shaped storm indicator that you can see on the right side of this screen shot in Florida represents a tornadic signature. if you touch the red pie-shaped storm track indicator on the main map it will bring up this little window. It will tell you what cities are in the track of this cell for the next 60 minutes. At the bottom of the window it will also tell you what other things apply. This storm track was in the purple shaded area off the east coast of Florida that was under a Gale Warning as well as a Small Craft Advisory. In the main black middle section, notice that there are five white dots. There are five pages of information that you can access by swiping that middle section.

This is the second page of the middle section, which shows you a list of indexes. You can learn what each index means by clicking on the blue question mark in the blue circle, but in this screen shot you can see that the tornado impact is a 4 out of 10.

 

The next page is more data about shear and freezing level and several other indices.

The next page tells you probability of hail and approximate size as well as several other indices.

Sorry, but I'm missing a photo of the last page.

If you notice the colored, shaded areas along the coast, those are different weather alerts for the coastal area depicted. If you click on the purple one just south of Talahasee this box pops up which shows you that the area is under a Gale Warning.

 

 The blue pie-shaped markers are for Hail threat. The blue markers also have all five pages in the center black area.

The green pie-shaped markers are for strong thunderstorms. They also have all five pages of data in the middle black section.

If you touch the white area (from the winter storm Jonas yesterday),

it will bring up a Winter Storm Warning.

 

If you touch anywhere in the bottom section of the main screen where the local forecast is, it will open to a full window. At the top it lists all the basic info like temp and wind speed and humidity, pressure, etc. If you go down to the middle of the page where it says Daily|Hourly it lists the forecast for the next 10 days. If you look to the right you will see three icons. The first is the list view currently displayed.

If you click on the middle icon it brings up the graph view. In the graph view you can touch and slide the line with the temps along the graph line. If you go to the hourly, you can touch and slide the hours of the day across and the graph below will reflect the hours visible on the screen at the time.

 The third icon brings up the forecast discussion. This is the information that we used to go to the Deep Weather app to find. We really like the discussion because it gives you a chance to hear if there's any uncertainty in the forecast.

 If you go back to the list view, you will see on the far right a plus sign. If you click on that plus sign it will expand each day to give the basic forecast for that day.

 Back on the main screen, in the bottom left hand corner you can see a little icon with a ruler and pencil. If you click this icon and choose ruler, you can touch the screen and draw a line to a storm cell from your location or measure anything else you want. On this screen shot you can see that it was 128 miles from my location to the tornadic storm cell. If you choose the pencil you can write notes on the screen, something that might come in handy if you were doing a screen print to print on a blog or Facebook page.  

 In the lower right hand corner you can see the drop down menu for the windstream. You can choose surface or jet stream. 

You can also choose to see the severe outlooks for today, tomorrow, or three days away in the drop down menu in the bottom right corner. 

 If you choose Wind Speed on the layers menu, it will disable the radar and give you t his screen instead. At the top it has the wind speed color gauge and each of the moving specks of color correspond to the key.

It also has water temperature as a layer possibility, which also disables the radar and gives you this screen corresponding to the key at the top.

Weather Underground absolutely nailed it on this one. The developers deserve a huge attaboy. Hope you find it as useful as we have so far. There are a bunch more layers to play with in the layers menu, so have at it and if you happen on any neat features that you find useful or that we missed, please leave a comment. Have fun!

Storms and choices

The Mother ship filled the western horizon. Another monster storm was headed our way and it looked wicked. (I would have preferred a real mother ship complete with big-eyed aliens, this endless run of thunderstorms is starting to get old.) The wall cloud spanned at least 20 miles and sported a clear rotation. Tendrils of cloud hung low in scary places and no one, least of all me, would have been surprised if a full blown ugly started probing for the ground below.

Daughter Eldest, Son-in-Law Second, and grand kids second and sixth had joined us for dinner. They spent most of the day at a Spanish Mass, having started their Sunday hours before mine. Grampy T (that would be me) is a happy heathen who sleeps in on Sundays without a second thought, yet virtually all of the people I love most in the world are people of faith. In fact Son-in-Law First is a Catholic Priest. (It is a long story that I don't actually understand myself.) They all love me as much as I love them so all is well in the extended family of Kintala. If the rest of the human family would learn to do the same, much would be better in their world as well.

The Mother ship drew closer and the radar image showed a pronounced bow echo pushing our way. We made haste to clear the decks of anything that could go flying in the expected wind gust and literally battened down the hatches. Grand child second joined me under the dodger looking for signs of water spouts. Truth to tell I would rather have had them all in a jet, eight miles high and able to run at 500 knots. But I left that world more than a year ago. Corporate America burned my life down without a care (metaphorically speaking) in a Board Room dog fight. It wasn't the first time the powers that be had praised me for years for my excellent work on their behalf, then showed me the door without so much as a "thank you".  But I was determined to make it the last. We pointed Kintala's bow toward the horizon and never looked back. This is not to say that, should America ever decide to free itself from the tyranny of profit-over-everything, I will pass on the chance to (metaphorically speaking – of course) burn down the houses of those who torched mine. But I live on the ocean now, far way from those kinds of people and glad of it. Part of that means swinging the bow into the storm and accepting what comes.

Daughter Eldest and family live on the nearby Floating Bear for different reasons. They are artists and writers, creators of beauty and seekers of truth in a culture that has rejected both. For them the American Dream of endless hours spent serving the god of profit-over-everything, to pay for things they don't really want or need, amounts to a soul crushing life of misery. They are seeking a different path, one which also requires swinging the bow into the storm and accepting what comes.

And so our little family of social rejects (which is just the opposite of how it sounds) watched the Mother ship swallow the city of Coconut Grove. Whatever that rotating wall cloud was spawning was now hidden in the rain shield sweeping across the mooring field. The winds built, 15 – 20 – 25 – touched 30, and then fell away. Rain pounded the waves flat. Lighting flashed, thunder shook the rigging... Deb served up the dinner she had been cooking and all was well.

Sometimes, not always but sometimes, the storms we face for daring to live a different way are full of bluster and noise and are scary looking, but pass without doing any real harm. The rain eased and the crew of Floating Bear rode the dink home. I sat in my cockpit and watched the lightning flash and fade on the far horizon. Overhead the stars shone while off to the side the clouds glowed with the city lights. Kintala rode easy to her mooring. We don't live like most people do and that suits me just fine.

We will be on the move soon, but not as far north as we thought. Too much time was needed to do that thing I needed to do. Kintala and The Floating Bear will move north about 30 miles, risking the Florida heat, bugs, and hurricanes this year. We will do what we need to do, and then keep going.

Nature Rules

Probably the biggest lesson you learn when you start cruising is that Nature Rules. Yesterday the kids had plans to get a lot of stuff done on their boat before dinner, and then Nature said, "Nah Uhhhh...." 

The kids decided they'd rather ride that one out on a bit bigger boat since they had one available, and closed up their boat tight and headed over. Brian has been studying the weather since their transition to the boat and made the comment that it is so much more interesting to see it from the water since you can see so much farther and actually watch it develop. Earlier in the afternoon we could see the blow off from the top of the storm over our heads, even hours before the storm actually got here. it was clear it was going to be a big one.

After checking mooring line chafe guards, securing small items on deck, and clearing the propane lines, we sat under the dodger and watched as it approached. It turned out to be a non-event for us despite its threatening appearance, but some other people near us got hit hard. As you can see by our position marker in the radar pic, Miami has a way of breaking up approaching storms with its concrete island effect so we passed through the middle of two large cells relatively unscathed. You just never know which ones are going to hit you hard and which ones you'll escape, though, so each and every one requires careful preparation on the deck. As I've stated before in this blog, I firmly believe in the Black Box Theory so we always prepare as if each and every major storm is going to be the big one that can bite. And, since I've already had one person ask me why I do this, we turned our propane off at the tank and cleared our propane lines because it was forecast to be a big lightning event. After yesterday's trauma here in the mooring field I was pretty prickly on boat fires.

This morning dawned clear and calm, it's my birthday, and Tim is coming home so it promises to be a great day. Just a few minutes ago the crew of The Floating Bear paddled over in the dinghy named Eeyore and serenaded me with "Happy Birthday to You" and delivered some creative artwork done especially for me by the kids. I can honestly say I've never been serenaded from a dinghy before and I've never had a birthday gift delivered by one either. Even after all these years of living on a boat and nearly a year of cruising there are still firsts. It's what makes this life so interesting. Happy Day everyone!

It was a dark and stormy night...

Yes, I was growing up in the Snoopy days and that was my favorite comic, with Snoopy perched atop his doghouse with his favorite hunt and peck typewriter, writing his great American novel.  It was all I could think about today.

The Miami area was peppered with storms, some of them severe, so I wasn't sure if our scheduled diver was going to be able to come this morning to replace the zincs on our boat and the kids' boat, to clean the dinghy bottom, and to clean the bottom of the kids' boat. He had to cancel on Tuesday because the waves were so high in the anchorage that there was no way to safely do it. Having a 23,000# bucking bronco crashing about right over your head is not exactly the best way to live long and prosper.

This morning he made it out to the boat on the shuttle and was able to get started before the first storm (which he cleaned right through, oblivious to the pounding rain), and 2-1/2 hours and two other squalls later was finished. At $2 a foot I may never do a bottom cleaning again. We used a company called A-1  Boat Care LLC out of Miami. Freddy is from Colombia and I had the additional pleasure of being able to practice my Spanish while he was here. He was thorough, polite, fast, and very reasonably priced. I highly recommend him if you're in the area and are looking for a bottom cleaning or zinc replacement. I was going to take more pictures of Freddy and his equipment but it rained so hard the whole time that he was here and I still don't have a waterproof camera so I hid under the dodger. 

At least for the moment, for the first time since Tim left 8 days ago, there is no wind at all. None. Zero. Zilch. We're bobbing around hitting the mooring ball and the dinghy alternately, the full moon is shining brightly on the water, and I believe I just might be able to sleep. Which is good, because tomorrow the wind is supposed to be right back up there 15-20. The trials and travails of cruising...

Any port in the storm

Yet another cold front, yet another long night of thunderstorms with wind gusts near 40, tornado watches and warnings, heavy rain, and low visibilities. The ugly started ramping up late yesterday morning and didn't start to fade until around 0430 this morning. The highlight of the evening was having one of the crew-less boats drag completely through the anchorage and fetch up against the Charleston's Mega-Dock (you could look it up) a scant 100' or so behind the $9.5 million, 150 foot, super yacht Francine. Yikes. A little later a 40 power boat wandered in out of the rain and worked at dropping a hook, finally getting it to hold on the fourth try. She now rides placidly off our starboard side looking none-the-worse for the trip.

The rusty steel ketch in the center is the anchor dragger

Aside from the dragging boat (which fortunately didn't get anywhere near Kintala), riding out the weather on the hook was much less harrowing than was the night in Oriental. It must be admitted the Oriental front was much worse; but either way it makes for a long night. Back in Carlyle cold fronts would often be as mean or meaner, and moved much faster. Their assault could be vicious but short lived, then you could call the cops or the medics as needed. Here on the ICW the fronts methodically beat on you for hours on end. It is an entirely different experience.

A different way to Christmas carol...

I can't say I enjoy either one.

The frontal passage has brought a forecast of a nice weather window for the next several days, with winds out of the west and north at 5 to 15 knots and waves 3 feet or less. It seems like a good chance to jump outside, put up some sail, settle in for 40 hours or so and not come back in until FL is off the starboard side. Here soon we will head to a dock to load fuel and water, unload some “used” water, do some laundry, maybe take a long shower, eat well, sleep good then, in the morning, be ocean sailors again.

I hope Kintala agrees. We'll see.

Storm lessons learned

The bent bar in the foreground was straight and is now broken   

I've been thinking about the weather all day today. The storm last night was the worst one we've ever been through on Kintala, and it has provided good fodder for thought now that my brain isn't being rattled by the pounding and jerking.  In no particular order, here are my conclusions:

This is what happens to a teak rubrail after pounding the dock   

Dock boxes and power stations are no match for a 30,000 lb boat

1. If you're going to leave your boat at the dock to travel home for a few days for the holidays to visit family, please check the weather before you go and prepare your boat before you leave as if it will endure a 50 knot storm, whether or not one is forecast. It's unbelievably rude to assume someone else will check on your boat and risk injury to tend to it for you.
2. If you ever leave your boat at the dock to go anywhere please be sure your halyards are secure so they don't slap on the mast. It's just good seamanship. This might also sound like a "duh" statement, but we've spent an unbelievable amount of time trying to secure the boat next to us so we can get a good night's sleep.
3. Use double bow lines and double stern lines when you leave your boat, each led to different cleats if available. If you're not going to be on your boat, have the loop on the cleat and the bitter end on the dock so someone on the dock can adjust your lines if necessary.
4. Use every bit of chafe gear you have available.
5. Use every fender you have and then borrow some more.
6. Remember - dock lines stretch. Just because your bowsprit is 3 feet from the dock when you leave doesn't mean it will be 3 feet from the dock in a 50kt blow. It takes way less time to secure your boat properly than it does to fix a broken bowsprit. 
7. A 30,000 pound boat is a fearsome weapon in 50 knots. Power stations and dock boxes are no match for one.
8. If a storm is brewing, leave your foulies and boots by the companionway. You'll need them at 2:00am. Also have flashlights and gloves handy. Have extra dock lines out and ready.
9. Wear a life jacket if you have to go out on the boat to adjust lines. It's easier to fall off the boat  bucking and jerking on the lines at the dock than it is out on open water and just as dangerous, especially at night.
10. While it's not always possible, try to move slowly and with purpose. It's incredibly easy to lose a finger in a dockline or a foot between a dock and a bucking boat.