squall
Escapada
Andreas Haas
Sun 6 Dec 2009 21:15
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14.13.76N 051.57.47W
ESCAPADA continues her onward journey to St.Lucia through
challenging weather and heavy seas. Just in the last 12 hours we have been hit
by 2 large squalls.
The first one came in very rapidly from behind us at sundown last night bringing with it wind at
40 knots (about 80 km/hour), torrential rain and slamming waves.
ESCAPADA was tossed violently from side to side
while the wind circled around from all directions
battering the sails..We quickly fully furled in the
Genoa and
weathered the storm just under double reefed Main.
This was the strongest of the storms thus far during our
14 day journey, but not for long. The second
one
came at daybreak. With Bobbie
on watch alone, Captain Flagpole was up on deck in seconds to
furl away the Genoa, reef the Main and raise the sprayhood. Then,
we braced for the inevidable slam. It came violently
and hard. First the rain started, followed almost immediately with a massive
surge of wind. As the wind climbed
from 20 to 30 to 40 knots, the waves crashed on the deck from all sides. All we could do was firmly hold on, sail
through it and ride the storm. The Captain himself
took over the helm
and safely steered
ESCAPADA through the rollercoaster ride of the Caribbean morning.
After every storm there is a calm. After recovering from
the morning squall, we went to a starboard tack with only the Main.
This improved our course which had
been too southerly due to the
changing winds. Now we are back on course heading straight into St Lucia.
With less than 550 miles left to
go, about 80 % of our
passage has now been completed.
.
   THIS IS
JUST LIKE IN
ENGLAND!
BIG, MEAN, WET AND
WILD
RIDING THE
STORM
After the squall passed and everything was quiet again, we
had a discussion about the best practices of how we handled the storm. We all
concluded that Moses
and Captain Flagpole did the
best job in battling the storm and that they should continue this next time
it comes. Their reaction was captured in the photos below.
WHERE CAN WE HIDE FROM THE NEXT STORM??
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