Sydney's Weekend Storm

[Maggsy]

The storm approaching

Storm over Sydney whilst on Sea Monkey.JPG (65.94 KiB) Viewed 1508 times

Was anyone else out in the Force 9 winds on Sunday? The gusts hit 42 knots in the middle of Sydney Harbour and it all got a bit hairy!

I took a friend out for a cruise round the harbour, and we were just heading from Shark Island towards Manly when we noticed the nasty weather coming in from the city. Only one reef in the main and no.1 genoa flying, in retrospect I should have lessened the sail area a bit.

It hit pretty ferociously, and we were hammered for about 15 minutes until we got into the shadow of Bradleys head and managed to furl a bit of headsail. Sea Monkey took it in her stride, and my friend who was sailing for the first time just followed instructions and stayed calm.

The main lesson I learnt was that the wind does not always increase slowly, it can be a fair way in front of the cloud cover and hit like a freight train. I looked at the rain radar, but failed to look at the wind doppler radar for indication!

In future I will be furling the headsail a bit earlier and donning the inflatable lifejackets, rather than being caught with my trousers down!!!

Afterwards we agreed that it had been a complete hoot, but I am not too ashamed to say that there were a couple of minutes of worry and I learned a lot from the experience.

Maggsy
Sea Monkey - Top Hat 25 Mk3

[RIPPLE TOO]

What a hoot... my wife and I were just off Fort Denison when it hit like a proverbial sledge hammer, knocked us on our ear before rounding up and sitting quite tame, gave me time to furl the headsail and Lissy to start the motor (13hp Sole') needed half revs to make headway (15-1700rpm). Left the main fully up and motored into the eye of the beast, hale and all. 10mins later, the suns out and so was the headsail for a teriffic arvo, untill a ruddy big tanker decided he wanted our position on the harbour, (bloody hide).

All in all tho' apart from the sudden ferocity of the storm Ripple Too was a veritable rock, just gently layed over spilling the wind, and rounding up, so civilised, next time i'll get the wetties on us earlier for the complete comfort factor oh, and some goggles... jeez that hale in the eyes hurts

[Swift]

When the storm hit I was running down wind about 300 meters before the Harbour Bridge. I managed to furl the genoa which left me running under a reefed main. This was still a bit too much sail but I pressed on until I found shelter behind Kirribilli. So there you go, 3 Top Hats in all close to each other and we didn't know !

BTW, in sudden high winds a large genoa on a furler can be a truly frightening thing, particular inshore with a limited area to manoeuvre. One thing I learned a while ago in even higher winds was never put stopper knots in the end of the sheets. Although it was not necessary this time, in some circumstances its best to let the sheets go and have the genoa fly like a flag while you furl it instead of it shaking itself to bits. Now if I could only figure out an easy way to deal with the main?

[SeaLady]

I was caught in a dinghy going to my boat.
Ended up with a floating swimming pool and a very soggy dog.