Carloforte, Sardinia, Italy
Heading off to bed at 11 pm I noticed a lightening storm out at sea and took comfort that if it came this way at least we didn’t have the tallest mast in the marina, so our chances of being struck were minimized.
At 12:30 am I was woken by the sound of rain hammering down on the hulls. Thank goodness I’d closed the hatches as a precaution after seeing the lightening.
3:30 am, this time jolted awake by the sensation of being thrown around on a fairground ride. Scream if you want to go faster! I didn’t want to go faster and I didn’t like the noises coming from outside. The wind was howling, the dock was groaning and Dreams sounded like her cleats were going to be ripped out of her fiberglass core.
Beside me Mike slept peacefully, so for a few minutes I tried to relax as I told myself if Mike was worried, he’d be up by now.
Two minutes later, another physical jolt and gut wrenching creak from the rear starboard that had me convinced Dreams was about to split in two, I bolted upright and said loudly enough to wake sleeping beauty “how the hell are you sleeping through this?”
Mike assured me it was fine and it sounded worse than it was, but to appease me he got up to check on things.
Once topside it looked as bad as it felt. The wind was howling like a banshee and the floating dock was like a bucking bronco. Rising and falling and straining the lines of the boats tied to it. It made me feel sea sick just looking at it.
As my night vision adjusted, I could see activity on the surrounding yachts as other people did what they could to reduce the stress on their boats and lines.
We were on the leeward side of the dock so the wind at least was pushing us away from the bucking heaving mass of metal and wood. Our neighbor was on the windward side and his boat was being pushed against the dock with a force that was definitely not doing it any good and even worse, he barely had any fenders out so his boat really was taking a beating.
We got busy putting on additional spring and stern lines to try and hold Dreams more steady, as well as adding rubber shock absorbers to the lines to dampen the jolts.
To do this Mike had to get off of the boat and onto the dock, which he managed to do with a fairly graceful leap. Graceful isn’t a word you usually associate with Mike and the fact that I thought this in the midst of chaos shows how it surprised me.
Getting back on the boat was a different matter. With the wind pushing the boat away from the dock and the lines having been loosened to get the shock absorbers on, there was now a chasm between the dock and the boat that I ddidn’t think an Olympic hurdler would attempt to jump.
I was unable to pull on the lines from the boat to reduce the gap and after a few choice words from the skipper (notice he is skipper now, not Mike) his plan B was to use an abandoned pasarelle to do a reverse walk the plank.
As he tried to position it, I looked at the steep angle it would sit at and the moving dock and said “I don’t like it, it’s an accident waiting to happen”. The usually calm skipper responded “well I don’t like being on this f***ing dock”.
Plan C was then successfully executed. I got the starboard engine on and gave it just enough throttle to move the rear of the boat towards the dock, close enough for Mike to step aboard without having to perform any gymnastics.
Despite the conditions staying the same for another hour or so, Dreams held steady and the shock absorbers did their job of reducing the jolts and we eventually managed to get back to sleep.
Of course we woke up a few hours later to calm seas and slack lines. Boat life!
Good call on Plan B, Commodore Toni .
Being tied to a dock with those kinds of winds is harrowing. Glad there was no damage to you or your boat.
Well, someone pissed off Neptune/Poseidon. Adventure you wanted, and adventure you got. Don’t recall harrowing stories about snow caving, or conquering the John Muir Trail. I was anxiously reading your excellent, as usual, account of the “angry sea”, and was able to relax when you both safely survived. Any signs of sand storms brewing from the Sahara? Be safe, healthy, and, of course, happy.
Funny you should ask about the sand storms Arthur. We are regularly getting red rain and just to really rub it in, it always seems to happen just as we’ve spent hours giving Dreams a good clean. Yesterday was no exception, we stood back and admired our hard work with a sense of satisfaction only to wake this morning to a layer of clay like dust in all the nooks and crannies!