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As the dream goes, you sit on your boat in the Med, drink in hand, sun shining, 10 to 15 knot breeze going your way, the occasional swim over the side of the boat whilst at anchor in the lee of a beautiful island... Well, all this is true most of the time but, occasionally, the weather turns a tad uncomfortable and you think of other more pleasurable past-times such as bungee or parachute jumping, lion taming, bull fighting etc. We had such an experience sailing between Corsica and Sardinia last year.
We picked up our beautiful Beneteau 473, ‘Mercury II’, from France and proceeded across to Italy and then down to Elba, across to Corsica and on to Sardinia. The boat came up to expectations with the exception of a major design omission which I will elaborate on later. I must start by stating that the weather forecasting here is similar to anywhere else in the world. How many of us have been assured by a forecast of 10-15 knots, ignoring the fact that we have been ploughing through 35 knots on the nose all day? One would think these forecasters live on another planet! Anyway, we left Solenzara in Corsica at 0700 with a forecast of 15-20 knots, beam reach; ideal conditions. The weather was updated throughout the day with no change. Two thirds of our way through the 55 nautical mile passage, we were off the top of Sardinia and I noticed some ominous looking clouds building up, but there was still no change to the forecast. We were about 10 nautical miles off the coast, with nowhere to hide, so we sailed on. The wind gradually increased to 25 to 30 knots so we shortened sail to the 1st reef thinking that maybe a storm of say 35-40 knots might be on the cards. By the time we had the first reef in, it was time for the 2nd reef and to furl the Genoa; thank goodness for the single line reefing system, it works like magic... Within another 15 minutes, the wind had increased to 45 knots and it was time to pull all sails in and head towards land, which was directly into the wind. The waves began to increase in height at an alarming rate. With all sails in and our 100 hp motor on, we ploughed ahead and prepared for a further increase in the wind. At this stage, looking to |
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windward all we could see was a white wall bearing down on us. Unfortunately we could not completely fold up the bimini, so it became the first casualty. The wind by now had picked up to 62 knots with a wave height of approximately 3 metres which would be ok, except that the seas were very short and the wind had blown off the top section. It was now that I became aware of the before mentioned major design fault on our boat. There was no communicator on board that would respond to “beam me up, Scottie”! Try as I might, I could not find any mention of any method of escape in the comprehensive instructions that came with the boat. In the absence of this (and the helicopter that arrives just in the nick of time to whisk you away to a 5 star resort), we realized we were in a serious situation and had to get ourselves through it somehow. The spray from the tops of the waves lashing me reduced visibility almost to nothing but fortunately the radar was working like a charm even in such harsh conditions. There was so much water coming over the deck from airborne wave spray, we decided my wife, Brigitte, should go below. The likelihood of her being swept overboard by a 'rogue' wave was, by this time, a real threat. With her below I had one thing less to worry about. We closed off the companionway which meant the boat was internally waterproof. The companionway is made of Perspex, which meant that although cut off from the weather and me Bridget was able to see exactly what was going on and we were able to communicate with each other. Should one of us (me most likely) be in serious trouble the other could either raise the alarm or come out, hook on and help the other! Believe me, the thought crossed our minds continuously as to what the best course of action would have been. By this stage the wind held steady at 58-62 knots and so we motored into the waves. This was made difficult because when the bow rose out of the water on the back of a wave, the wind would blow it off and there was a bit of a struggle to bring the nose back into the wind. We tried running with the wind but this was a bad idea as at 15 knots we would stay in the storm longer. So, |
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back to plan A. The storm lasted nearly 3 hours and then reduced to 45-50 knots which felt like a breeze! We motored into a lovely bay and found about 45 boats were sheltering. We dropped our anchor in 40 knots in the lee of the island and stayed in the bay for 2 days while we recovered. When we sailed on to Ottiolo, a great resort/marina mid way down the coast we were told by the marina staff that they had been expecting the storm for a week. So much for the weather forecast! With incidents such as the these there are numerous theoretical solutions when sitting at the bar of your favourite club. However, when the sh...hits the fan you have to do the best you can in the circumstances. Luckily for us the boat and equipment came through relatively unscathed but this was an experience we would certainly avoid repeating at all costs.
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A Nasty Storm Martin of ‘Mercury 2’
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Page 4 |
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