Evanston: Force Twelve
Evanston: Force Twelve
Many of you know that Force Twelve is the highest on the Beaufort Scale, Hurricane Force, with winds above 64 knots/74 mph.
I have been in such winds between ten and fifteen times, always at sea and always, unless I’m forgetting something, in the Southern Hemisphere.
The most wind I’ve experienced at anchor was a tropical storm that passed over us in the Florida Keys in November 1994. We were at Marathon in a harbor well protected from waves and rode out that storm with two anchors set without difficulty.
Most of the hurricanes and cyclones--I’ve never been in a typhoon--were Category One storms.
I disdain hyperbole and prefer to under estimate winds and waves than otherwise.
I use as my baseline my experience of Cyclone Colin in the Tasman Sea in EGREGIOUS on March 5, 1976.
After I reached Auckland, I went to the Meteorological Office and was shown their charts of the storm. The center passed fifty miles south of EGREGIOUS with winds 60 to 70 knots radiating out 150 miles.
The last time I was in Force Twelve was in THE HAWKE OF TUONELA during a hard passage in October and November, 2002, between Cape Town and Fremantle, which saw eight storms of gale force or greater in six weeks, two of which recorded winds of more than 64 knots before a wave rolled the masthead into the water and removed the wind instruments, tri-color light and Windex.
Although winds at the lower edge of hurricane force are serious, I have come to expect that a well built boat with sufficient sea room will survive them. Whether GANNET would I do not know. Nor probably does anyone else. I would prefer not to find out.
CHIDIOCK TICHBORNE survived 50-55 knots, Force 10.
One storm stands apart from all the rest.
It was incomparably the strongest wind I had known when I experienced it south of Australia in EGREGIOUS in February 1976; and it is still the strongest wind I have ever been in today. How much stronger? As I wrote in STORM PASSAGE after visiting the Auckland Met Office and seeing the charts of Cyclone Colin, I do not know. But at least 20 to 30 knots greater than Colin. Perhaps much more. It was at least a Category Three storm, as presently is Hurricane Irene.
I’ve quoted this entry about that wind from STORM PASSAGE before.
February 13
BETWEEN when I bailed at 2:00 A.M. and when I bailed at 4:30 A.M., the barometer which I had hoped and expected to rise, began a steep decline—a decline which carried it into virgin territory far below any previous reading in my experience. This was to be a day, though, far beyond my previous experience. With that precipitous drop, still there came no increase in wind. Egregious continued boisterously but safely east, while I searched the dawn sky in vain for signs of the apocalypse. I returned to my berth but did not undress or try to sleep.
Every half hour I got up. The barometer quickened its downward acceleration; Egregious continued her fine sail; I continued to be ever more anxious. Something incredible and probably terrible was happening, but the only warning was the barometer.
There was no point in lying down any longer. I donned my foul-weather gear and stood in the galley, drinking coffee and looking out at the sea and waiting. When at 7:30 A.M. conditions began to change, they changed rapidly. Within a few minutes, the wind increased to 40 knots, and I replaced the jib with the storm jib. A few more minutes, and I lowered the storm jib. And then the wind went off the scale.
Just before it struck, I finished tying myself in the cockpit. At one moment, everything was under control, Egregious moving safely along at 5 knots under bare poles; then the tiller was wrenched unexpectedly from my hands and slammed over against the starboard cockpit seat. I remember being glad I had lowered the storm jib in time. No sail could have stood to such a blast. Egregious careened to port, broadside to a wind far beyond any I had imagined, a wind that leveled everything before it, a wind that pressed us down into the sea until I began to think we would be forced under.
There were no great waves. That wind flattened the sea. Using all my strength, I fought Egregious's bow back on course: 9 to 10 knots under bare poles. Not surfing, just being inexorably forced ahead of the wind. It was like sailing through fog. I could not see the compass 2 feet before my eyes. Yet there was no fog. The wind had torn the surface from the sea and flailed it about my eyes. I had to breathe cautiously, trying to inhale more air than salt water. I would like to believe I am inner-directed, but I thought, "This is too much, simply too much. It is too bad no one will know I got this far, that I rounded the Horn before I was killed."
When it struck, I did not know how long it would last, but I knew that I was at the tiller for the duration. This was the time to steer beyond exhaustion; there could be no other choice. But fortunately that prodigious wind passed within an hour, leaving us to lie ahull gratefully to a 50 to 60 knot gale, which by comparison is a relief.
I have friends in Irene’s path, as I expect do many of you. My thoughts will be with them this week end, and my hope that they emerge unscathed.
Friday, August 26, 2011