We had an amazing storm this morning: 45 kt gusts. Quite alarming to hear that racket inside Red Ranger. The mooring lines held: Dep Chief David gave us some old firehose which we cut up to make chafe guards. Nothing on deck was damaged: we try not to leave things lying around. The rigging moans at those wind speeds. The flash-and-immediate-bang of lightning is unnerving.
Our neighbors on Blue Heaven had their dinghy painter part. There was a bunch of radio traffic this morning as people fanned out looking for the lost dinghy. They were relatively lucky: it had piled up on a mangrove island close by; the port tube was punctured, but it was otherwise intact.
Tuesday, the 22nd, is the limit of the reliable forecast window, so we're starting to see the real data.
TUE22… Strengthening LO 34N/67W with all significant wind well offshore / next LO Lake Erie trails FRONT along Appalachians (FRONT exits Coast Tue22 night) / most areas catch a nice break from wind (though maybe not seas)...while SW wind builds briefly along US coast ahead of FRONT.
WED23...LO shifts E of New England trailing ColdFRONT thru waters between US and Bermuda...and begins to merge with/incorporate the LO which was previously offshore NW/N of Bermuda...this results in strong NW wind (to Gale force) N-and-E of Hatteras Wed23 night-Thu24… But only a brief shot of modest NW-N wind S&W of Hatteras to about 28N during the 1st half of Wed23, followed by light wind in all areas CpLookout-Bahamas-Florida later Wed23, but may be a (brief) surge of N<E wind E of ChstnSC Wed23 night-Thu24 morning.
We'll be far "S&W of Hatteras"; We'll also be S of "CpLookout" (Cape Lookout) the entire passage. Cape Lookout is close to Beaufort, NC, where we enter the ICW.
We have a good news/bad news situation. The good news is that the seas are flat. The bad news is that the winds are so light we have to motor.
Here's the wind and wave analysis for the 22nd. This is the entire North Atlantic; it covers about 25 times more ocean than we care about.
We're focused on the SW corner. We like the 1m and 2.5m wave height numbers near the coast of Florida. The wind arrows show little single blade hockey sticks; those are good. The long blades each stand for 10 kt of wind. Two long blades is 20 kt, about our limit. 3 long blades is almost gale force winds (gales start at 34 kt.) We prefer to be anchored or moored under those conditions.
Monday, we'll get the last of our forecast data for the various offshore zones. These are the links from S to N along our route.
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?zoneid=AMZ651
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?zoneid=AMZ650
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?zoneid=AMZ555
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?zoneid=AMZ552
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?zoneid=AMZ550
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?zoneid=AMZ454
http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?zoneid=AMZ450
We have another bunch of links for weather offshore of GA, SC and NC.