How to predict a storm when at anchor

The waves in the bay were hitting two metres as a heavy front made its way along the coast towards our cosy anchorage.

What should we do?

As anyone who’s ever anchored a boat already knows, the strength of the wind alone isn’t the problem, the direction is more important. But it’s the waves that are gonna bring the biggest trouble.

The day before all that happened, we had a jolly nice bbq on the beach with Sharon and Lindsay of SY Songlines III…

Back to the gale.

With winds over 30kts expected, we would be seeing a swell pouring into the bay that would whip round the headland and come straight at us.

Normally we would have moved as soon as we saw the storm coming. But the trouble was that we had just received notice from our tenants that they would be quitting our flat in London, so we needed solid internet connection to find new tenants while half way round the other side of the world.

The flat provides our income and without it we would be in big trouble. Finding new tenants had become our number one priority.

We don’t have an agent so pre-crazy-times we went back to the UK to assess and titivate the flat before putting it on the market. With the pandemic and border closures still in full swing, heading back was not an option.

When Jamie checked the weather forecast on Predictwind the day before, it showed nothing exceptional heading our way. But now, as he checked again, he realised he’d been reading the wrong model: there was a sizeable storm coming.

With nothing between us and the entire width of the South China Sea, there was a strong possibility anchoring would become untenable. The strain on our lines and windlass could break them.

Should we up anchor and search for a safer place?

In Episode 280 Jamie explains what went wrong and why he did not predict this particular storm at anchor until it was on its way.

Check out the video here…

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