Tropical Cyclone Wind
Clear But Windy This Afternoon
As the northern reaches of Hurricane Matthew moved over us the last couple of days we went from drenching rain to high, steady wind. Starting around midnight it rained, at times torrentially, the rest of the night through mid-morning. Then the wind and waves started. The wind makes an eerie sound whistling through the rigging, while every once in a while you hear a loud “boom,” like running into a drum, which is a wave breaking on the hull. We are probably over a hundred miles from the closest pass of the eye but the wind from the storm is significant. Not leaving the slip today.
We are now experiencing an interesting phenomenon that happens in the Chesapeake. Because it pretty much closed at the north end and open in the south, and because it is relatively shallow, especially where we are, the wind can have a large effect on the tides. Fairly high wind has been blowing steadily from the north all day and this tends to push water out of the bay. This causes the water level to drop a bit, and the low tide ends up being, in this case, a couple of feet lower than normal. That means, in our otherwise shallow slip, we are now grounded out, as are several boats here.
Below is a photo showing a couple of our instruments. Not a great photo because the surfaces of the instrument is highly reflective. The left instrument shows the depth below the boat at 5.5 feet, the right shows the wind direction and speed. It’s kind of hard to read but the wind speed is 21.2 knots. It’s been gusting up to 30 knots. But the important reading is the 5.5 feet of depth.
The reason is that the bottom of our keel is 5.3 feet below the water. I’m not sure the depth meter is accurate to an inch, but I do think we are or will be bottomed out because it’s not low tide yet. Normally it should be 7.5 feet at low tide. We couldn’t leave if we wanted to! And the locals tell me it takes a couple of days for all the water to flow back into the bay this far north. The daily tide bulletin board at the marina that shows times for low and high tides says:
Low Tide: No Kidding! High Tide: Tuesday (Today is Sunday)…
Bottoming Out
Posted in Sailing by Mark with comments disabled.