Our First Gale

Location: Jackson Creek, Deltaville, VA
Date: 15 Oct., 2006
Current position: 37 32 51.86 N, 076 19 47.09 W

This is our first Khronicle in quite some time and it's fairly long - we hope you don't mind.

It's been a busy few months - after our daughter's wedding, Julie's father passing away, and two trips to England followed by a couple of stressful weeks at work, we were thoroughly ready to get back aboard Rachel and spend some time on the water decompressing. We decided that we'd take off for a month or so and cruise around the Chesapeake "until it gets too cold", like we did last year. Our first weekend aboard was beautiful, just what the doctor ordered. We left on Saturday and had a fantastic, sunny, and warm sail to meet up with some friends at an anchorage about 16 miles away.

Finally, we were on the water and aboard Rachel and life just doesn't get any better. As you know we need good Internet connectivity to be able to work from Rachel, so we decided to anchor in Jackson Creek, just off Deltaville Marina for the week, where we can access their now much-more-reliable WiFi Internet connection. That's where this Khronicle begins.

We were working along happily on Thursday when we heard there might be a front coming through on Friday with 20-25 mph winds. We figured that we'd been in the same place for 5 days and our anchor was pretty well set - so no big concern. Then, later in the day, the weather forecasts suddenly started talking about 25-35 knot winds with gusts to over 40 on Friday night and Saturday.

We decided to let out some extra chain to add to it's holding power. We'd never been anchored out in winds that high, so we became a bit nervous. We decided to sit tight and wait it out - can't scurry for shelter every time the weather gets bad, eh?

Unfortunately, by Friday morning the forecast had increased again to sustained winds of 30-40 mph with gusts to 50 mph and possibly higher. We deployed our secondary anchor for extra insurance as soon as we heard this, and are really glad we did. The wind built throughout the day and by nightfall Mark had been sitting in the cockpit for over 4 hours, watching for the slightest indication that our anchors might drag. Gusts were hitting Rachel, heeling her over 10, 15, 20 degrees with no sails up, and the mast started pumping (very low frequency vibration that feels like a big shudder) in some of the gusts.

Because we were pretty close to a dock on the opposite side of the creek and had almost no room to drag, we decided to do 2-hour anchor watches throughout the night. All night long one or the other of us was in the cockpit watching our location, making sure we were sitting tight, and keeping an eye out on the other boats in the anchorage while the other tried to catch whatever sleep we could during our off shift.

There were 9 other boats in the north branch of the creek with us. One captain who had his family with small children aboard loaded everyone up in their dinghy and left the boat early Friday evening for the duration of the storm. Watching that made us a bit nervous - maybe he knew something we didn't. Concern continued to build as one forecast after another predicted worse than we initially expected.

That boat, two others, and Rachel were the only boats in the anchorage that didn't drag anchor at some point during the night.

It's difficult to imagine what it must be like to realize, in the middle of the night, that your anchor isn't holding and that you need to haul it back in, motor into the wind, reset it, and pray that it holds this time - all in the middle of the strong, gusty winds we were experiencing. We watched as one boat tried to reset it's anchor 4 or 5 times before cruising up to the marina and looking for dock space. The marina's docks were under water at this point, due to the storm driving the water up into the creek and the captain made the wise decision not to attempt a landing. They headed back to their original position and reset their anchor once again - thankfully, this time with success.

At several points during the night the wind gusts were so powerful when Rachel was at the top of a wave and pulled up against her anchors, that we'd feel the strangest sort of corkscrew motion - something very different from anything else we're used to on the boat and quite disconcerting, especially to the one who was trying to catch some sleep below.

When day broke, we were greatly relieved to see that Rachel hadn't budged an inch. Her two anchors had held like rocks and all three of us were safe and sound. We fired up the coffee, rechecked all the lines for chafe, and prepared for another full day of the same. The wind moderated a bit, but still continued at about 25-30 with gusts to 35 and above, and we maintained watches throughout the day.

We finally made it to Sat evening when the winds died down a bit. Julie went right to sleep, but Mark 'the worrier' kept getting awakened by gusts, leaping out of bed, getting dressed, and popping his head out to look around - he finally fell asleep in his clothes.

Sunday dawned gray, but cleared around 11-ish, and the wind decreased to 15-20 mph. Finally we felt okay about leaving Rachel on her own, so we got in the dinghy and headed over to the marina for some well-deserved showers, laundry, and dinner with friends looking out on the now peaceful creek, sharing stories of 'the storm'. Life is good. Scary sometimes, but good.

Mark & Julie
s/v Rachel