Gloucester is a giant wall of a mountain that does a mostly effective job of blocking the prevailing trade winds. The wind piles up on the windward side until it finds a gap, then it goes rushing through at double speed in what are known locally as “bullets”. As we closed on the island, our steady wind got gustier and gustier and started shifting around more and more, making our track look like a child’s scribbles. By the time we were almost there, we were spending half of our time rapidly accelerating to nine knots and the other half coasting to a stop. It was on the last of these lulls that we just managed to pull all of the sails down before the next thirty-knot gust hit us.
A quick overnight at Gloucester Island on our way south... Thankful for the beautiful sunset!
The anchorage was beautiful, but also a little crazy. The wind was thirty-knots a third of the time and zero the rest, with almost nothing in between. We would be sitting in a peaceful flat calm when we would hear the sound of rushing water. Looking in that direction, we could see it was the sound of the wavelets being pushed ahead of the next gust. It would arrive from a different direction than the last, hitting Begonia broadside and sending her skidding sideways until reaching the end of her rode. Sometimes, the gust wouldn’t last that long and we would slide to a stop in some random location before being pushed somewhere else. There was one other boat anchored with us. We both swung through the whole compass rose several times an hour. When we awoke the next morning, we were a little surprised to find that we were being blown toward the beach by strong winds (although the beach was still plenty far away). At least we knew our anchor was well dug-in.
No comments:
Post a Comment