Small Craft Warning

[HeaveToo]

How to you guys feel about sailing through a small craft warning in the Compac 23?  Do you generally avoid it or are you confident that the boat will handle well?

Even now I tend to respect them, but sometimes when you are cruising and you have a schedule to keep, ie. getting home, you have to punch through heavier weather.  If they are off the nose it is a real pain and I really don't like that but I have had some amazing sailing when the wind is aft of the beam.  I sailed from Hampton to Indian Creek in the Chesapeake Bay one day, after crossing 2/3 the way over towards the eastern shore, and did 60 miles in 7 hours.  I was surfing down the backs of waves with a full main and no jib averaging over 7 knots.  It was one hell of a ride.

[Bob23]

   I would take any small craft warning seriously. The 23 is a stout craft and can probably take more than I can but I'd rather not temp fate. I was out on a last sail of the season 2 years ago and ended up in 4-5 foot swells marching down Barnegat Bay with a 20-25knt NE wind. We were on a run and it was not fun. I made the mistake of running under main only...I'll never do that again. If I'm ever in a similair situation, I'd douse the main and run under reefed genoa. Under the main alone she had a horrible tendency to want to round up  putting an incredible strain on the tiller. Without a strong motor, we would have missed the narrow channel into the marina and might have ended up wrecked. Or statistics.
   It's called a warning for a reason. Just my opinion.
Bob23

[capt_nemo]

It is certainly prudent to gain experience sailing your boat in some "Heavier" Weather so that you can better understand the boat's capabilities and limitations, as well as your own. Doing this "safely" or with minimal risk is certainly a matter of  different opinions, I'm sure. However, to knowingly set out in Heavy Weather with Small Craft Warnings in effect, is, in my opinion foolhardy at the very least.

Mother Nature is somewhat fickle as far as the sea is concerned. And, I have been "surprised" by her fickleness on several occasions when sailing well offshore in larger vessels. "Surprised" enough to accord her the RESPECT she demands.

The sailing literature is replete with horror story anecdotes by sailors who knowingly placed themselves, their crew, and their vessels in harm's way because they "had a schedule to meet".

capt_nemo

[skip1930]

Your schedule, aka Float Plan, should always include a weather day. No reason to hurry up and die.

Twice I had to take refuge in a harbor of refuge for the night. Headway with a 5 hp in a CP-19 was dismal, 4 hours made less then three miles.

Once I had to go bare pole and motor only for steerage and keep one eye glued to the chart plotter. Could not see past my bow in a hale stone storm. I looked over the lee side I saw a seagull resting and keeping station along side the hull. That strangely was comforting. Barley cleared the buoyed shallows off the north end of Green Island in the bay of Green Bay.

In a bad situation the wind came upon me when I was not paying attention. I started the engine and pulled the main down and tied it up. Hung on to the tiller with two hands and a leg draped over the tiller. The furler with a 155% was too hard for me to reel in. The sail needed to be let-go to stand the boat back up. So I untied the stopper knot, un cleated, and the lapper blew freely out front of the mast and quickly rolled itself into a long knot of sail material and tangled  sheets. The boat started out even with the seawall and light by Maumee River and even though I believed I was making head way, when all cleared, I was down wind of the light after being blown astern. Making harbor an hour later the sail was furled away, still wet.

All in a days sail. Heave Too is not a bad thing to do if you have the seaway. Also a 100 foot of line and a 3 lb Hills Brother's coffee can is not a bad thing either.

skip.

[NateD]

I'm not sure they issue small craft advisories in my normal cruising ground (Lake Pepin, MN), but a few years ago I was up in the Apostle Island on Superior with my 23 during an Advisory. We decided to stay at the marina instead of heading out into the islands for the night like we had planned. In the morning we went out for a sail and it was pretty intense. In the afternoon the wind picked up even more and we took a ferry ride to see what the conditions were like and I'm glad I wasn't out in a small boat. I like spirited sailing (I had her on her ear (everyone on the tourist boat was taking pictures) this weekend with just the 135 genoa up in 20+ knot gusts), but true 30+ knot winds look pretty rough for anything except running downwind or heaving to.

[HeaveToo]

I agree with what you guys are saying.  Small Craft Warnings are no joke.  I was mainly looking to see how you felt about the boat in bad weather.

Anyone who has sailed for some time has been caught by something.  Wither it is quick moving summer storm or some unpredicted weather that moved in and caught you off guard.  They key is how the boat is handled at that point.  

With my current boat I find that reefing the main and going with a reef and the engine tends to be the best way of making it through when I have been caught out.  Each boat has its own sailing characteristics and there are different techniques that can be employed to deal with the conditions.  It is part of learning the boat and I agree that you wouldn't want to take a new-to-you boat out into heavy seas before you knew what she could do or how she would handle.

When I plan longer trips I always give myself at least one weather day.  I guess that is part of being an experienced sailor.  May days I have sat in an anchorage and held there longer than I wanted to because conditions were not favorable.  I have left places to avoid being stuck in an area when weather moved in.  It is best to error towards caution.

I guess that the better question would have been how do you deal with being struck by heavy weather.  

[HeaveToo]

Here is my story of going into a Gale in the Chesapeake Bay.  I can't stress enough that I would have never left port if I had known what I was about to hit.

I had just purchased the Spirit of Liberty in a place on the Bay called Deltaville. My Uncle, who has years of cruising and sailing experience, was going to help me transport the boat home. I had just finished up a week of hard work to prep the boat for the passage and I made sure that all the systems were working well before I cut line.

The morning started off very well. The weather was absolutely amazing with a nice wind out of the South East (the wind was at 10 knots). It was ideal conditions for the passage I was making as the wind was just aft of a Beam Reach down the Virginia Side of the Chesapeake Bay to Smith Point.

We were making great time and we were far ahead of schedule. The tide was coming in and it was giving us about a 1 knot boost as we headed towards the Potomac River.

The wind began to die off as we started to round Smith Point Light House. It then switched and came up out of the North West. This is a very unfavorable direction because the place that we were heading was dead upwind and it would mean tacking back and forth across the wind to get there, thus adding a lot of distance to the trip.

At first we had a pleasant wind that was at 10 knots. The waves hadn't built much but the sky had clouded up and it was spitting rain off and on.

The wind picked up to 15 knots and I rolled in part of the jib on the roller furling. I hadn't rigged the main for a reef, which was a big mistake, and I didn't have the lines aboard to rig the main for it.

Soon the wind built to 20 knots. At that point we had started the diesel engine and rolled up the jib. We had the main sail up to stabilizethe boat. The gusts were touching 25 knots and the waves began to pick up. I noticed that small craft warnings were popping up on the VHF radio. Small craft warnings are for boats under 30 feet and my boat is slightly over 30 feet so I wasn't horribly worried.

The wind built in strength even more and it started blowing at 30 knots sustained and gusting 35-40 knots. The waves built up and they were 6 feet with steep crests because the waves and wind were blowing against the incoming current. Waves began to break over the bow of the boat at times and it was getting to be a rough trip.

Finally, the wind hit gale force. I had to go forward in 6 foot seas and drop the main sail onto the boom and lash it down. The wind was howling through the rigging, spray was flying everywhere, and the decks were being washed down by the waves that were regularly coming over the bow of the boat. I hung on so tight to the boom while I was lashing down the mainsail because I knew that if I slipped and fell off of the boat I would be lost at sea and possibly never found.

What had happened is that we had managed to hit the most treacherous part of the Chesapeake Bay right at the time a huge front was going through. The waves had gotten to the point where there some 8 foot waves that were breaking on the cabin roof.

I kept on thinking that my boat wasn't designed to hold up in these conditions. I have never seen anything like this before and I was terrified. I thought that the boat would be damaged or destroyed. Soon I realized the fight that we were really in and it wasn't a fight to save the boat but a fight to stay alive. If the boat sank we would be tossed in the the frigid waters of the Chesapeake Bay in Mid-April. We would surely die if we went into the water.

The other problem with the area that we had gotten stuck in was that there is not a place for 15 miles to go into to duck and run. We were stuck in wide open water with no safe ports. The closest place that we could go was the Coan River and it was 15 nauticle miles up wind.

We beat into the storm for 6 hours. Finally we got to the mouth of the Coan River. We went into a safe anchorage inside of the Coan River and got the anchor buried in the mud. We were safe in port but the ordeal still wasn't quite over.

During the day my foul weather gear proved to be faulty and it had leaked. By the time we had gotten into the Coan river I was begining to get Hypothermic. I spent the night drinking warm liquids and huddled up underneath two sleeping bags. The next morning we woke up to find the wind still blowing at 30 knots out of the North West and there was Frost on the deck. This was a large Artic cold front that we had sailed right into and we weren't prepared for it.

We stayed in the Coan River until late that evening when the winds had abated. We then motored 4 hours in flat water (thank God) to a place called Tall Timbers. The ordeal was over at that point. I had to extend my trip an extra day because we hadn't made it home when we were supposed to.

The amazing thing is that my boat had survived this gale without being damaged. We had survived it without getting injured and everything was okay.

If I had been more prudent I would have seen the signs that a front was coming. The odd thing is that the forecast just had called for rain and they didn't realize how powerful this front would become. The small craft warnings didn't come up until we were already in harms way.

[skip1930]

" If the boat sank we would be tossed in the frigid waters of the Chesapeake Bay in Mid-April. We would surely die if we went into the water. "

USPS Boating course;
Rule of 50.
50 degree water
50 years old
50 minutes.

Adjust up or down as these 50's change.

skip.

[capt_nemo]

FYI, the statement that small craft advisories pertain to boats UNDER 30', is incorrect.

Although the National Weather Service has not specifically defined "small craft", the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary has defined small craft as those UNDER 65' in length.

capt_nemo