During the storm

[sailaway78]

I know, sometimes I just do something a little crazy. I was one of the very few to stay. Had always run before. This time, just decided to ride it out. Mostly because the normally bad side was this time trying to come apart, and it was obvious it was not another Katrina. I didn't think the winds were that bad, but I talked to the cop who lives next door, and he told me the gusts were well over 80 knots. This pic was taken before it got really bad. I tried tried to get something more dramatic, but the rain was coming down so hard, not a chance. And there were some much more dramatic moments. The boat was over much farther than I have ever even thought about sailing it. I sat on the deck and watched as it just rocked and rolled. Absolutely no damage, but things inside, which if I were sailing it would be put away, lashed down weren't. They are all now in the floor. The dink in the previous post was not left in the water, had been using it to take anchors out, and hadn't gotten it out of the water yet.

 

[sinnettc]

how close . . .

was the sailboat to that piling? It has to be farther away than it looks in the photos?

 

[Hermit Scott]

HHmmm

weren't you the one that told me I should take a refresher course before scraping my hull with scuba gear on? And you are the one doing the forest gump ride the storm out through a hurricane. lol

 

[sailaway78]

Close to the pilings

The boat is about ten feet off the pilings. I have two anchors on the far side, holding it from getting any closer. Kind of a balancing act in here, as the canal is about 100' wide, and have to leave enough slack in everything from the tidal surge. So it is kind of close. Have managed to survive two hurricanes tied up like this. Gustav and Katrina. So the system works pretty good.

 

[Hermit Scott]

Storm

The PO of my boat says the same thing about the system with the 2 anchors and 2 lines to the docks. How do you set those anchors in?

 

[sailaway78]

Setting the anchors

What I do is run one at a 45 off the bow, same for the stern. Actually all I can get in here is about 35 degrees. Just not enough room. As far as I can get them out. As you can see from the photos, not a lot of room here for scope, so I just put out all I can manage. Fortunately the canals are dredged, and the holding is very good. Put them on a winch to set them. If you can move them with a winch, they aren't set. I use four dock lines, bow, stern and two springs. The bow line was attached to a sampson post on the foredeck, and the aft one to a winch then a cleat. For my primary dock lines I used doubled 7/16 sta set. I think maybe the sta set is not the proper choice. Even though it's plenty strong, it has virtually no stretch. I was watching during the worst of the winds, and seemed like the non stretch of the sta set was snapping tight and putting undue stress on whatever it was attached to. If I ever have to do this again, I think I will use 5/8 nylon, which will have a little bit of shock absorbing capabilities. Only problem I have had, is during Katrina, there was so much surge that it pulled one of the lines over the top of a piling. This time I moved the boat forward, and used primarily the boat house pilings, so the dock lines can't get over them. The very aft line, I put a couple of nails in the piling above the line, so it couldn't pull up and over. So far, so good.