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Story time.
I dont claim to be an expert sailor and am bound to miss something from time to time that would make a salty sailor shake their head at me. This time it was tide flow at an inlet.
My wife and I were starting our first multi day sail from Pensacola Florida to Tampa Bay. It should take us about 42 hrs to sail a little over 300 miles. We actually choose a weather window that would start with 3 ft seas for the first 6 hours and then reduce to 1ft seas. Sounded like a comfortable sail even if we would have to motor a lot due to lite winds.
So imagine my surprise when leaving Pensacola Harbor when we encountered 6 ft standing waves in the channel leaving the inlet! The boat was hopping and popping. The bows were rising up only to plunge into the next wave. It was hectic, it was violent and it was avoidable. A strong outgoing tide from a big bay being forced through a funnel ( inlet channel in this case) confronted with by a strong inbound wind can cause large “standing” waves.
Lesson learned. Add check tide flows for inlets to departure checklist.
Evidently one of the two ropes holding the the dinghy up in the air was chafed during that episode. We were about 30 miles offshore at 11 pm when there was a loud crash crash from the back of our boat. Generally loud crashing noises are a bad thing and this was no exception. The dinghy was suspended by the bow while the aft end was dragging in the water. The Bimini top was half ripped off and twisted. We put the engines to idle and stated to drift while trying to recover the dingy. We got the dinghy dropped entirely into the water and I boarded it while My wife played out enough slack to keep it from slamming into our boat.
Its dark. No land in sight. Im bobbing in a dinghy. I can smell fuel. Fun. Luckily my wife knows how to tie proper knots and kept me from floating away into the darkness.
1st order of business- bail it out. Easy.
Second. Untangle the Bimini. Not easy. It was twisted under the dinghy and still attached on the other. My wife kept getting me tools and reeling me in to transfer of said tools from boat to dinghy. Sounds easy, not so much.
With the Bimini removed and transferred to the boat the last order on business was to decide how to attach the dinghy to the boat. The blocks disappeared to Davey Jones locker when the rope broke so using the davits to suspend it was out of the question. The simplest solution was to tow it. We attached two lines from the stern of our boat to the dinghy and towed behind our boat for about 260 miles.
One note about towing a heavy dinghy. It slows you down and we lost about 1.5 knots in speed. Thats a lot when you only move at 5-9 knots. It turned our trip into a 50 hour sail instead of a 42 hour cruise.
The rest of the trip was great. With many visits from dolphin pods, clear skies and sunny weather. At one point while crossing we were 50 miles from land and 4 little birds showed up. These weren’t seagulls but little sparrows or finches or whatever. Two ventured in our open windows and allowed me to hand catch them and relocate them outside. In the morning we saw the evidence that they had stayed on our boat all night. Feeling lite again they took off in the morning migrating to where ever.
I dont claim to be an expert sailor and am bound to miss something from time to time that would make a salty sailor shake their head at me. This time it was tide flow at an inlet.
My wife and I were starting our first multi day sail from Pensacola Florida to Tampa Bay. It should take us about 42 hrs to sail a little over 300 miles. We actually choose a weather window that would start with 3 ft seas for the first 6 hours and then reduce to 1ft seas. Sounded like a comfortable sail even if we would have to motor a lot due to lite winds.
So imagine my surprise when leaving Pensacola Harbor when we encountered 6 ft standing waves in the channel leaving the inlet! The boat was hopping and popping. The bows were rising up only to plunge into the next wave. It was hectic, it was violent and it was avoidable. A strong outgoing tide from a big bay being forced through a funnel ( inlet channel in this case) confronted with by a strong inbound wind can cause large “standing” waves.
Lesson learned. Add check tide flows for inlets to departure checklist.
Evidently one of the two ropes holding the the dinghy up in the air was chafed during that episode. We were about 30 miles offshore at 11 pm when there was a loud crash crash from the back of our boat. Generally loud crashing noises are a bad thing and this was no exception. The dinghy was suspended by the bow while the aft end was dragging in the water. The Bimini top was half ripped off and twisted. We put the engines to idle and stated to drift while trying to recover the dingy. We got the dinghy dropped entirely into the water and I boarded it while My wife played out enough slack to keep it from slamming into our boat.
Its dark. No land in sight. Im bobbing in a dinghy. I can smell fuel. Fun. Luckily my wife knows how to tie proper knots and kept me from floating away into the darkness.
1st order of business- bail it out. Easy.
Second. Untangle the Bimini. Not easy. It was twisted under the dinghy and still attached on the other. My wife kept getting me tools and reeling me in to transfer of said tools from boat to dinghy. Sounds easy, not so much.
With the Bimini removed and transferred to the boat the last order on business was to decide how to attach the dinghy to the boat. The blocks disappeared to Davey Jones locker when the rope broke so using the davits to suspend it was out of the question. The simplest solution was to tow it. We attached two lines from the stern of our boat to the dinghy and towed behind our boat for about 260 miles.
One note about towing a heavy dinghy. It slows you down and we lost about 1.5 knots in speed. Thats a lot when you only move at 5-9 knots. It turned our trip into a 50 hour sail instead of a 42 hour cruise.
The rest of the trip was great. With many visits from dolphin pods, clear skies and sunny weather. At one point while crossing we were 50 miles from land and 4 little birds showed up. These weren’t seagulls but little sparrows or finches or whatever. Two ventured in our open windows and allowed me to hand catch them and relocate them outside. In the morning we saw the evidence that they had stayed on our boat all night. Feeling lite again they took off in the morning migrating to where ever.
