Soloed down to Georgetown yesterday (long commentary)...
all I had down there was a steady drizzle that began around dark and continued off and on until past when the band shut down at the Kitty Knight.
Today was another story! NOAH gave a warning for storms in the lower Susquehanna Valley and along the Md/Pa boarder, clearing off after 9am. Figuring to beat those forecast later for the afternoon, I left Georgetown around 9, expecting to get up to North East before the afternoon fun began. Boy, was I ever wrong. Heading out with me was a newer Hunter 33 named Windsong (home port Oxford), possibly out of HdG.
As I came up on Ordinary Point heading out, was hit by a line squall of rain that knocked visibility down to about a quarter mile. Made the turn and continued outbound, passing Red 2 some time after 10 am. Temp dropped by about 20 degrees. About halfway to Grove Point the NOAH alarm went off and they issued a severe thunderstorm warning for one over Aberdeen heading East, with high winds and intense lightning and an advisory to mariners to seek shelter immediately. At this point there was no where to hide as all sides were lee shores. BANG! A bolt hit over in Betterton and about deafened me!
It looked like it was clearing below Aberdeen so I thought I was going to get missed and it would pass to the north--wrong again. About a mile from the ship channel, where I noted a tug/barge heading north, another white water squall line came across the Bay. I had just enough time to throw on my rain gear jacket, put a way point west of Turkey Point into the GPS, hit the GoTo button and select highway on the menu before visibility dropped to less than a couple hundred yards due to the intense wind and rain--the proverbial deluge! I lost sight of Windsong at this point. Wind was in the 20's pretty steadily but the waves weren't more than about 2 to 3 feet due to the short fetch off the west shore.
I cleared the stern of the tug to cross the channel, and continued for almost an hour to cross the Bay toward Turkey Point. Constant surveillance found only one other boat out in this mess, and he was heading the opposite direction. Repeated deluges would block out visibility for minutes at a time. As I got within a mile of the Turkey Point waypoint, the wind lightened, the rain backed off, visibility improved to the point of several miles and growning. Wind became light and still on the nose all the way up to North East. By the time I docked the sun was out, but ominous clouds were still forming towards the Elk
As I was approaching NER Red 4, one of our club boats (a Farr 40) coming back from the Gov Cup merged into the channel ahead of me. Later conversation with him on the dock had him leaving Annapolis around 4:30am this morning and began hitting the storms off Baltimore. Waves weren't very high as they didn't have the fetch from a southerly wind (wind was west-east mostly). He did try sailing for a while but getting the headsail back down was extremely difficult. Didn't get a Gov Cup report though!
Weather radar would have been nice as one couldn't make out the ramifications of the NOAH forecast, statements, and warnings from the verbal dialog. With better information I might have waited things out until the storms passed. Without knowing what was following, this would have been gamble.
New S-1 autopilot performed almost perfectly. Tends to want to hunt a bit so may need to find what in the menus governs this and give it a tweak. Sometimes the boat wants to turn slightly after engaging but suspect this was due to high end crusing throttle setting causing some prop walk before the ap detected it.
Outstanding trip--wouldn't want to repeat it!
