Feb 26, 2021 The weather is.....what?

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The plan for today was to leave mid-morning to sail outside (in the ocean) to Winyah Bay, SC. The weather forecasting app was saying there would be nice sailing weather to go south in 15 knot winds. Perfect!

Just one problem: That was not the real weather. We were sitting in 25 kt winds with respectable sized whitecaps.  A check of the NOAA weather report on the radio said gale warnings with 25-30kt winds and increasing wave action to 9-15 feet, lasting several days. This is not the first time we've encountered very very wrong forecasts, which is why we check every available resource, including looking out the window.  We scrapped our ocean sailing plan for now and will continue motoring down the ICW.

At Point Lookout we were pretty exposed to the high winds and after much discussion we decided to carefully move back to Morehead City to anchor for the night. Small problem...This required moving about seven miles in the ocean with winds gusting to thirty knots.  Fortunately Morehead City was downwind and Second Star was moving at four to six knots down with no sails up.  We purposefully went slow as hurrying would put us trying to go into the inlet against a very strong outgoing tidal current.   We made a careful entry at the inlet, but just inside the breakwater the outflowing cross curent had our bow pointing about 30 degrees off of our actual course as Second Star crabbed through fighting both wind and current with both engines at maximum thottle.  In the end it was a clean transit, but one we will remember.  

We considered pressing our way down the ICW, but being mid afternoon the most logical action was to anchor nearby in Morehead City and prepare for an early start tomorrow.  There was an after dinner game of scrabble (Brent 295 points, Lois 286). 

From here on, the anchorages on the ICW are far apart, so there will be early morning departures and sunset anchor drops.   We should see temperatures in the mid 70's tomorrow; we are looking forward to that!  Here's hoping for a more interesting (but not eventful!) day tomorrow.


Comments

Lynn and Ed said…
Living by the weather forecast is part of what makes cruising an adventure, sometimes more adventure than what you expected. Have fun!
February 27, 2021 at 7:54 AM
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