2023-06-23 Tropical storm Bret

Tropical Storm Bret has passed up north, from St. Vincent and St. Lucia to Martinique. Because of the rotation in the storm system, that means that even here we will get strong winds, squalls, rain, and waves in the aftermath.

Anchor Watch

For many this means have an app which alarms if the anchor drags or the swing of the boat goes outside a given radius. But in reality it is a specialized watch shift on a ship. This anchor watch means watching out for much more than just dragging. But Zanshin is smaller and for me an anchor watch means being in the cockpit, having the VHF on and at the ready, using an app (in this case, the anchor watch functionality on my chartplotter) and occasionally looking about for approaching dragging boats.

I did this throughout the night. The VHF and anchor dragging alarms were mercifully silent. Apart from one loud BLEEP when the winds shifted and the anchor reset to the new direction. The strong winds in the forecast have not materialized, so there was a close to 0% chance of a boat dragging into mine. I spent much of the time napping.

Although there was no wind, the rolling was quite uncomfortable. A couple of items that I hadn’t secured in the bathroom and galley succumbed to entropy. There’s one very loud squeaking sound that I can’t get to, I assume it is the join between the woodwork and the shower stall, to which access is impossible without removing the floor pan. But I only heard that noise while in bed, up top the wind noise prevailed.

Morning

It is now 7AM as I write this. The weather is going to be cloudy, rainy and windy all day as the trailing edge of the system passes overhead. A squall is passing by as I write this and all the hatches are closed and my fan is running. And now the winds are picking up in the anchorage – finally. I’d prefer calm, but somehow the anchor won’t have been worth it without having something to report. The winds are gusting about 25 knots and there’s now a lot of rain. Too much to risk getting my camera wet outside; plus those pictures never seem to turn out right. They are just grey and don’t show the rain.

Gusty morning

Stronger winds and gusts have arrived here. I decided to let out more chain, just to be on the safe side. The image shows how I arrived yesterday, searched for an anchoring spot and dropped the hook. The winds were from the NNE so the first several hours show me to the south of centre. Then overnight the wind shift to coming from the SSW so the boat moved to the norther sector. Then it backed and got stronger and the extra 100 feet will show a new radius in my movement around the centre of the circle. 

09:15

A particularly strong gust came through and tilted Zanshin over until the anchor bit. Then I got a call on the VHF from Mark on Sea Life who said they’d seen something blown away in the gust. I looked around and found that one of my Solbian 125W flexible panels had blown away. I could see it astern, slowly sinking. But on it’s way overboard it had taken out some hardware on the Bimini and that was really bad. One metal hook holding the bimini up blew out, and I fixed the problem in time with 550 Paracord. But some seams on the bimini frame had torn and I needed to fix that ASAP to prevent further damage and ripping. Again, 550 Paracord to the rescue. I checked the other side of the bimini attachment and found that it had also bent, but not broken. So I added some cord on that side as well.

10:30

I just had a minute of 33Knots constant and saw 2 waterspouts lift off the water. It is overcast with a heavy layer of stratus giving us some rain. Mark had dragged a bit and after letting out more chain was quite close to a mooring, so he and Marjorie used a lull in the winds to re-anchor. I see them in the distance, but they aren’t back in comms.

The models all concur that these squalls and winds are going to persist into the night as Tropical Storm Bret moves slowly westward. These are being “pulled” inwards and are increasing the normal trades and dropping lots of rain.

The VHF is getting a bit busy now with dragging boats, and people telling others not to re-anchor “here” due to their long scope. I’m glad to be here where nobody is close; that’s one less worry. 

14:00

The winds have died down quite a bit in the past half hour. Perhaps tropical storm Bret hasn’t got anything left for us while he continues barrelling along westwards. I’m not quite certain if this a just a breather between squall lines or if the worst is now over, but I’m enjoying the respite. I might just take a nap for an hour or three and catch up on lost sleep. 

I’ve decided to treat this tiredness like I do jet lag. Don’t get out of sync with the local clock. So I’m going to stay awake until tonight. Then I’ll get a full night of sleep and awake refreshed tomorrow. At least tropical storm Bret is now just a fading memory.

I made a burger on the BBQ with some salad and watched a movie I’d long had but had never looked at, Harakiri, from 1962. It was in Japanese with no subtitles and I realized that not only was my Japanese rusty, it was pretty much gone. I’m either going to have to try to re-learn it, or accept that I’ve forgotten the language through disuse. I cracked open a bottle of Talisker to celebrate Bret’s passage.