Too Much Wind

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An early night and a lot of wind. In the morning a huge thunderstorm passed over us. Huge claps of thunder and lightning all around. The wind gusted for a while but wasn't too bad. After the storm had passed the wind settled to a steady easterly. We decided to leave.

The forecast was predicted strengthening  throughout the day. The forecast had been for a force 7 but then changed to a force 6. However, the forecast then increased again to a force 7 and on passage we could here strong wind warnings on the radio for force 7. We were going with the wind so it should feel a little less.

The wind grew stronger and stronger and by 13.00 was very strong. Force 7 and some! We were sailing under foresail only. We reefed and reefed until we hardly had any sail at all. The boat was zipping along above 7 knots. The waves were getting bigger and we surfed down into the troughs. Conditions were awful. We hoped as we entered the large harbour things might improve however they only got worse.

A huge tanker came from behind and overtook us. We had to change course to avoid it but it was terrible timing. We pulled the boat back on course and neared our destination. The wind just grew fiercer and fiercer. We couldn't reef the sail anymore and we were still travelling too fast. It became clear that there was no way we could run along the canal to our berth in these conditions. Luckily there is a sand spit inside the harbour that offers some protection from the waves. The spit was to windward so the only way we could reach its protection was by engine. With difficulty and a lot of flapping we wrapped the foresail, now with partly torn UV strip due to the conditions. We used the engine on full power (far more than it has ever been used) and very slowly we moved forwards at less than a knot. The wind kept blowing our bow away but we had to persist. We could see other boats anchored and hoped the 10m depth would reduce. It didn't and we were close to losing our fight with the wind so we dropped anchor.  We quickly dropped all our chain and most of our line. The boat pulled up onto the anchor and we were secured to the ground. Relief, even though some water, even in the safe anchorage still made it over the boat. Not a very nice experience in testing conditions for us and the little boat.




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