Securing Your Boat For Heavy Winds – A Cautionary Tale

Darryl Hughes from First Class Sailing has seen first-hand the power of the coastal winds during the stormy 2013/14 winter. Here’s his cautionary tale, illustrating the dangers of not securing your boat carefully.

Ahoy Shipmates!

As you well know with all these low pressure weather systems barrelling in from the Atlantic, we have experienced some very strong winds. I am currently in Crosshaven checking up on Maybird. She is all grand – all snugged up on her pontoon mooring on the Owenabue river at Crosshaven.

However, one of the boats craned ashore for the winter was not so lucky…

Disaster in the Making

The owner of this craft – a Beneteau 45’, weighing some ten tonnes – had placed it in the cradle, with 6 timber shores propping it up. However, he mistakenly left his furling headsail on (increasing the weight and therefore the windage of the boat up-top) and tied his inflated dinghy on deck, fore and aft – but not very securely.

One of the lines came off the dinghy and was left flapping in the wind, thereby increasing the windage on the boat. The 60-knot gusts and the increased windage of the dinghy plus the furled genoa was enough to push the boat to its tipping point.

Fortunately no one was hurt and no other boats were damaged. One of the angle irons on the cradle punctured the starboard side of the hull, and many of the boat’s frames are fractured.

Lessons Learned

The moral of the story? When the forecast tells us to expect gales of 34+ knots, we need to take into account that the wind is well capable of gusting by another 25% to 30%. We also need to reflect on things that may increase the windage on our boats. There is an Irish Coastguard station just 500 metres from the boat and they recorded gusts of up to 80 MPH during the gales.

Keep watching the forecasts and looking up and out of the window – you couldn’t wish for a better illustration of low pressure systems.

Happy New Year – fair winds and flat seas for 2014.

Darryl

If you want to improve your skills and avoid situations that Darryl has observed then you should take our RYA Yachtmaster Theory course.

Posted by: First Class Sailing