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Living on a boat leads me to focus on the weather and environment like never before. As our world is warming, due to the amount of carbon we pump into the air, the number and intensity of storms in the Atlantic is rising. I began following Elsa, the fifth named storm of 2021, as soon as she was named and it looked like she’d grow into something major. I use NOAA’s Hurricane Tracker app as my early warning system. By last Monday, it appeared she’d hit Florida as a hurricane, track along the Atlantic coast, and perhaps give us tropical storm conditions in New England. Luckily, Elsa didn’t stay a hurricane long and Florida was spared a major problem.
I began to ready the boat and myself for Elsa on Thursday. By then we knew the timing would be that the storm would build in the area Friday morning and be gone by about mid-afternoon. To prepare, I added an additional fender between Sans Souci and the dock and doubled up my dock lines. In a tropical storm, rotating counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere, the wind will come from from several directions as the center moves past. I wanted to be ready to fend off being blown into the dock and also be safe when blown away from it. My two headsails were already tightly furled so I just rolled them a few additional times to wrap the sheets more tightly and then I took the spinnaker and spare halyards and wrapped them around the length of the furled sails. I added additional lines wrapped around the mainsail to keep the sail cover firmly in place. The winds were not forecasted to gust above 40 knots in Fall River so I opted to leave the bimini and dodger up; I just secured all of the clear vinyl side panels and made sure everything was zipped and snapped in place.
Friday morning, as the storm approached, I turned on all of my instrumentation so I could better track the storm and also get a feel for how I might predict an approaching storm if I was at sea. I had a high wind alarm set to warn if winds rose to over 30 knots.
The most notable feature of this storm was the rain- there was lots of it. Over 2 inches of rain fell in the few hours it took Elsa to move through. Initially, the wind was easterly and that put us to leeward of land and some condos overlooking the marina. Being somewhat protected in the lee was good since the storm ended up passing slightly west of us, putting us on the windier side of Elsa.
As the eye passed over, the wind diminished to near calm. The photo above is of the barometer, taken as the pressure flattened out, indicating the passing of the center of the storm. Not long after, the winds switched to westerly and increased. We saw gusts over 30 knots and building waves on the bay with our position no longer in the lee of anything protective.
I filmed the video above to explain what I was seeing on my instruments during a windier part of the storm. By about 3 PM, Elsa had moved on up the coast and was making life difficult for Mainers, leaving sunny skies over us.
Wind over time
The pressure profile in the picture above is characteristic of a fast moving, deep low. it seemed to bottom out at about 29.50 inches of mercury, making this a strong storm, but definitely far from anything catastrophic. It would have been uncomfortable and somewhat dangerous to ride out at sea but posed no problems to us safely tucked in at the dock.
Friday evening I enjoyed a lovely dinner with my dock neighbors, Mark and Sue on their Nordhavn 50. I greatly appreciate how generous and friendly boaters are to each other. There is camaraderie, even between sailors and power boaters as we all face similar challenges and rewards of spending time on the sea.
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Did you consider leaving the Bimini unzipped so the wind could go through instead of putting pressure on it?
I did, but the zippers are all so fragile that I was afraid I’d have trouble getting it back together. The canvas is something I need to deal with before too long. I can’t have it so I can’t take all that down when I’m at sea. It didn’t present a problem with Elsa, however.