Waiting for a weather window

Location: Crisfield, MD
Position: N 37 58.587 W 075 51.574

Part of the cruising life involves waiting for a ‘weather window’. This is defined in one of our books as “The period during which wind and wave conduct themselves favourably for completing a leg of a passage in safety and comfort.”

For you non-sailors this means that if the weather conditions are not to our liking, we sit and wait until they are. It’s not that we can’t sail in bad weather but when the wind is honking at 30 mph or more, the waves on the Bay are 4-5’ (and really close together) and the wind direction is not in our favour, it puts a lot of strain on the boat and the crew. So if we don’t have to move today, why bother? This was one of the reasons we quit work: so we could sit back and enjoy these waiting days rather than having to press on. Part of the reason we stayed in Vienna for 4 days was because the weather was unfavourable and see how nicely that turned out!

We left Vienna on Thursday, October 25th. The weather forecast was pretty good and as you know, we are trying to get our 50 hours on the engine. Unfortunately the forecasters were wrong and we spent a long day with high winds (gusts to 34 mph) dead behind us rocking and rolling our way back down Tangier Sound to Crisfield, MD. This may explain our hesitancy to leave here until things calm down a bit.

The plan, based on Thursday morning’s forecast, was to head back across the Bay to Deltaville on Friday, then hop down to Zimmerman’s yesterday. Three days later we are still here, waiting for our weather window. It has actually been quite a relaxing time, apart from the torrential rain, howling winds and Rachel bouncing around doing “the anchor dance”. We’ve got a few little jobs done, read a bit, cooked, and stowed some of our stuff more efficiently.

Every evening we think we will finally be able to leave ‘tomorrow’. Every morning we get up and listen to the weather, and, of course the forecasters have upped the day’s wind estimates, changed the wind direction, sprinkled in more inclement weather, and we decide it’s just not a good day to leave. We call our friends and have a little conference about whether to leave or stay, and every morning so far, have decided to stay.

The rain and wind finally did let up for a while yesterday afternoon, so we got the dinghy down, motored over to shore to meet Mike & Helen and went for a nice walk in shorts and shirt sleeves. Now it’s back to blowing around 25-30 again, but no rain.

Today the odds seem to have changed a little for the better. It looks like high pressure is moving in and will stay over the area for a few days. This means clear skies and less intense wind creating a more favourable weather window for us to finally get moving again.

But now (of course!!) there’s a new twist to the forecast: there’s a frost advisory for tonight. FROST for crying out loud!!! Well that’s just not good enough! It’s well past time for us to be heading south … stay tuned!!

Fair winds (and weather windows)