Excerpt from the log:
17 June 2020 Pilot Harbor, Nuka Bay (Day 2 of gale) Anchor watches through the night and all morning. Em from 11pm-2am, Brent 2am-5am, Em 5am-8am, Brent 8am-11am, Em 11am-2pm... Then we were both awake and very tired. Extremely windy with strong gusts (probably 40-50 kts) through the night. Stays humming and quivering, halyards slapping despite being secured, wind howling through the rigging, and waves slapping the hull. Around 11am the gusts became less intense but the wind generally more sustained. I loved listening to the patterns that emerged - how you could hear the wind gust whistling as it arrived before the halyards began to rattle, and how after a gust passed through there would be a heavy splatter of rain on deck as if the clouds carrying it departed with the wind but forgot to bring the rain along. The alarming sideways heeling when a gust hit our beam, the eventual tug of rode stretching to a well-set anchor, followed by the quick jerk of the bow straightening out back into the wind. During the 30 hours of this gale we read, played rummy, peered out the portholes, ate sporadically, and placed marks on our chat plotter when large gusts stretched out our anchor chain and rode (we had a full 170 degree arc over the course of the storm). We were relieved when the wind died down in the evening. Gales are exhausting! Especially with only two of us to keep an eye on everything. The quiet was lovely, though almost eerie, after tuning into to each and every sound on the boat and in the environment under those intense conditions.
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April 2021
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