Wild night



And not that kind of wild night. The forecast was for winds up to 35kts, which we new would be a little uncomfortable as the marina is a little exposed to the estuary. We tightened up our lines and doubled up the main ones and moved fenders around in precaution and headed down to make dinner. You know it's bad when the gimballed stove is at an angle when at the dock!!

The first sign of trouble was someone on the deck of our neighboring boat (the owners were away). The boat, a wooden ketch called Buon Giorno had frayed through a dock line and one of the other boat owners had replaced it. I agreed to keep an eye on the boat and went below to eat dinner. It was Ruth's turn to check our lines, and while she was out in the wind and rain I noticed the midships cleat moving on the boat (a very bad sign). I rushed out and between Ruth and I managed to move the lines to the fore and aft cleats. I then noticed more chaffing lines so added another stern line and went back to the warmth of our cabin. When I next checked, the original stern line had parted and the boat was swinging out close to a large catamaran - so I alerted the owners. They had an incentive to stop Buon Giorno breaking loose (they were downwind) so provided a couple of massive 7/8" mooring lines. We attached these fore and aft, but amazingly these chafed through in 10 minutes. Around this point Ruth noticed our wind speed gage hit 56kts and it was still building. I jumped aboard again (this meant waiting for the bowsprit to drop close to the dock and jump on and get lifted up - tricky timing). and tripled up the 7/8" lines added chafe guards and jumped off again. These lines started to chafe through but there was little else we could do; fortunately the wind started to drop to 30kts then 20kts so even though at least one of the lines parted the boat stayed at the dock (though it's bobstay was damaged).

At least one other boat was quite badly damaged, an Island Packet that (like us) was being blown against the dock. They had hull damage after 2 of their fenders popped. We had all 7 of our fenders close together between us and the dock and they were all being squeezed almost flat (at least all the rubbing cleaned them up a little). What was pretty disappointing was that none of the staff from Charleston Maritime Center Marina turned up despite the gale force winds - I guess that is the risk you take when going to a city run facility. The main city marina didn't sound much better, we heard a 110ft motor yacht calling the coastguard to complain about a 70ft motor yacht that had come loose from it's slip and was breaking up on it's bow (not that the coastguard could do much - they were pretty busy with boats in trouble at sea).

First picture is of one of the parted lines and damaged bobstay on Buon Giorno; the 2nd of us with tripled lines and all fenders out.


Posted: Sun - June 3, 2007 at 10:15 AM          

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