In the last blog Griff talked about the way the wind did not cooperate with us. When we are planning to sail there are three websites we check for weather forecasts - National Hurricane Centre, Passage Weather and Carib WX. We also listen to Chris Parker on the SSB. He is the weather forecaster for Carib WX and broadcasts every morning at 0700 on the SSB. He had been mentioning squalls with winds up to 30 - 40 knots for the NW Leeward islands and Griff was wondering which islands he included in that designation. We had experienced a thunderstorm as we were coming up the west side of Nevis - lots of rain but no wind. That was why he was wondering.
The morning after we arrived in Nevis we were on the Coconut Net and happened to mention the lack of winds on our trip and that we would like a bit more wind. Now the reason for the title of this blog.
Approximately 10 minutes after the net was over it sounded like the wind was picking up. I turned on the instruments and sure enough the wind was increasing. I watched the rise steadily and rather quickly. Within minutes it was at 25 knots and still rising. The skies had been overcast and black to the south. Soon we could see the rain coming. The rain came down in sheets, visibility decreased and the wind continued to rise. The highest Griff noticed was 55 knots. Visibility was such that the fishing piroque mooring about 100 feet away was invisible and the boat anchored about 150 feet away was barely visible and looked like it may have been dragging. We spent about 15 minutes worried about if the mooring would hold or if the other boats would drift into us. It was all over in 30 minutes.
When the winds had dropped and the seas sort of settled but it was still raining, Griff did one of the things we try to do when we get a good downpour - 'swab the decks'.
We hope we never experience a storm like that again and definitely not when we are at sea.
Enjoy the videos.
Oh how it rained!
What Griff does when it rains!
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