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| Coming from the southeast |
March 8, 2012
Mangrove Bight
(Guanaja – Honduras)
16º30.191 N
85º52.143W
As eager as we may be to move south and get to Panama’s San Blas Islands, we must respect the nasty weather conditions. If the last 2 weeks have been downright blustery, the last 3 days have wrecked havoc in the Caribbean. According to Chris Parker, there are the highest seas he’s seen in the Caribbean in the course of the last 10 years! Strangely, tucked in Mangrove Bight, Guanaja, we’ve been spared. Weird!
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| 12-foot wave breaking on the outer reef |
When my cousine from France (Françoise) sent me a Facebook message,“Where are you in relationship to the storm?” I responded, “What storm?” All the weather predictions for Guanaja were for winds from the ENE at 20-25Kt, with some passing gales. Nothing different from the last 2 weeks, and we were just waiting for the trade winds to lessen before continuing our passage eastward. Intrigued, I opened the GRIB for the Atlantic-Caribbean area. HOLY MOLLY! Looked like the perfect storm. A large depression over the North Atlantic, a swirling low in the Gulf of Mexico, and a nasty cell over Columbia. We were surrounded, to the Northwest, the Northeast and the South, with 3 weather systems. Gale force winds were predicted in the Southwestern Caribbean (Panama, Columbia), in the Rio Dulce (Guatemala), and the Eastern Caribbean. Nowhere to run, so we stayed put, picked a protected anchorage at the base of the hills and behind the reef (although open to the W-SW) and relied on Big Bertha (our 150-lb Raya anchor) to hold us in place. We battened down the hatches and we waited for the storm.
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| By now, the navigable cut is awash in pounding waves, no longer navigable |
We waited, scrutinizing the sky and feeling the windshifts. We made 360’s at anchor, but only with 8-10kt winds from the west. Meanwhile, 12-foot waves kicked in by the nothern front were crashing on the outer reef, further broken down to a ripple by the inner reef. We rocked side-to-side for a few hours, the light winds insufficient to counteract the mildly rolling wave action. Finally, the wind picked up alternatively NE to SE, rising in the 20’s with gusts in the 30’s. Overnight, squalls made their way overhead, showering us with much needed water to rinse off DOMINO. But overall, we were feeling relatively mild conditions. The only tip off to the nasty storm out-there was the size of the waves crashing on the reef. Soon, the entire cut was obliterated by crashing waves and whitewash and, would you believe, a lone dugout canoe was surfing the entrance, the old man paddling in the storm as if nothing was happening.
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| Going to bed with an ominous sky: coming from the west |
When you can’t go diving, what do you do? Like the English Patient, we ran the list of poetic wind names:
- The Williwaw, the fall wind of Magellan Strait (and Alaska) so well described by Josh Slocum;
- The Tehuantepecer and the Chubasco, fall winds of Mexico;(Fall: as in fall from the mountain, not the season :)
- The Mistral and the Tramontane, of France’s Mediterranean coast;
- The Simoon, the desert wind of Arabia so well pictured by Herge in Tintin au Sahara;
and perused the rest of the wind list from Earl Seagars’ Marine Weather course (anyone familiar with OCC sailing school in the 70,80s and 90s remembers Earl’s fabulous weather classes.)
We like to watch the clouds and the birds surfing the currents. Here are a few pix.
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| Waterspout dissipating NE of us |
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| Swirlling clouds above: what next? |
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| Will this develop into a waterspout? |
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| More swirling, coming lower. Waterspout? |
And perhaps it’s time to list our favorite weather prediction websites and tools:
- Chris Parker’s daily email to us and daily SSB broadcasts: he’s the king of Caribbean weather! Yearly membership $195 for daily email, $295 for SSB voice AND daily email.
- Buoyweather pinpoints weather by buoy location, with 7-day forecast for members ($99 lifetime) and can deliver daily text to your email, Iridium, Sailmail, etc… Can also forecast passages.
- NOAA marine weather page delivers daily emails for selected zones (Caribbean & North Atlantic) as well as Hurricane warnings during hurricane season (May through November).
- grib.US, with downloadable GRIB files and 5-day forecast animations (need Internet access);
- Passageweather.com and Windguru are additional back-up sites when we don’t feel good about the first 3 previsions.
- Stormpulse is a cool site we use to track storms and hurricanes during hurricane season.
- Radio weatherFAX and NAVTEX reports get to our Furuno weatherFax receiver daily (Choose from 50 worldwide stations located in 25 countries, a free service);
- SSB: we don’t have SSB marine radio equipment yet, but that’s only a matter of time. We are planning on getting our HAM radio installed when we get to Bocas del Toro. Daily cruiser nets (6.209 for the NW Caribbean) provide valuable information on current weather as boats underway broadcast their position and weather observations.
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| The high-velocity spinning cloud moved away! Phew! |
Well, the wind is abating, the waves are down to 3-4’, and the predictions seem to concur: a end to this nasty weather is in sight. Just a few more days and we can go on our merry way. Next? The Hobbies, off the coast of Nicaragua.
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| A flock of white pelicans cavort in the winds |
Until then….
dominomarie
