First passage squall!

10º 56.168n 120º 53.659w

Thu Apr 25 2019

Late last night we arrived at the portion of the trip that Coach Jamie had described as “a narrow slot between fire and brimstone”. I was raised Methodist, and never even figured out if we believed in Hell. I reckon Jamie was raised Baptist. Or Catholic.

Nothing happed during the dark, wee hours. We set a sail plan that would tolerate the potential conditions without disaster, and checked the radar for impending doom every half hour or so. Nada.

Mid-morning we got our first visit by a mildly annoyed Mother Nature. She offered us a couple of major wind shifts and gave JollyDogs a nice bath, but no fire, no brimstone. Woohoo! The entire crew had the educational opportunity to see what a squall looks like on radar, where the areas of highest intensity are, where rain can and can’t be detected by the 4G system we have, the whole enchilada. It was great!

Now we’ve changed to a more aggressive sail plan to make speed during the remaining daylight. We’ll press hard to get clear of the area of highest storm potential, then likely find ourselves in light funky winds where we have to motor along to clear the ITCZ. We’re still reefed down a bit to cope with the messy seas and potential squall encounters, but the breeze is fresh at 16 knots, and it is kind of fun tooling along at up to 9+ knots. Odds are we will get whacked more than once during this passage, but we’re even better prepared than we were this morning.

Glad Jamie has our back, and we’ve got PredictWind on board to help us evaluate the forecast and make rational decisions about how to avoid or exploit what’s ahead. There’s just nothing like actionable intelligence. Money well spent.