George Town - Weather Woes

The past few days have been rainy, with winds steady at 20 knots and higher, gusting to 35 knots. We have been kind of trapped on the boat during this weather because with the outboard propeller slipping, the dinghy won't go very fast and it's no fun to get soaked by waves and rain while puttering along at 2 mph. So we've been hanging out on the boat, doing some spring cleaning and waiting for the weather to abate. We're hoping the new prop arrived today, Kevin will call the hardware store when they open.

Yesterday afternoon around 4pm we heard a call on the radio to another Manta that was leaving the harbor. The boat hailing them (Saltine) asked them to switch to another channel, so we followed them to listen in. Yeah, I know, we eavesdrop. A lot of boaters do it. It's not uncommon to hear two boaters on a working channel talking about repairing a generator, and then you hear a third boat that wasn't part of the original conversation say, "Break, break. What kind of generator do you all have?". So we occasionally eavesdrop, what else are you going to do when you're stuck on the boat in 25 knot winds?

Anyway, Saltine saw this Manta heading out of the harbor in 20-25 knots of wind and rain and asked them if they were going "out there" for research purposes. The Manta replied that they had to be in Fort Lauderdale in 10 days and were worried that the weather would get worse so they wanted to get as far as they could and were planning to sail through the night. Saltine asked if they'd heard the weather that it was supposed to get up to 35 knots of wind that night. The guy also advised them that since it's been blowing steady out of the northeast for the past 3 days they'd have awful seas and if anything happened they would have a lee shore (that is where the wind is blowing you towards land instead of away from it. You don't want to lose power in those conditions because you'll end up on the beach or rocks). The Manta said that they knew all that and thanks for the advice but they were going to go anyway. Saltine was persistent, telling them that Ft. Lauderdale is not that far (300 miles) and they could easily get there before their deadline without risking going out in rough conditions. The Manta thanked him again, but kept going anyway. It is interesting to see two different attitudes about weather conditions. We wouldn't have even wanted to move across the harbor in conditions like yesterday, let alone go out on the Sound. But we remember last year how inexperienced we were. We were leaving Block Island to go back to the dock in Warwick. Conditions weren't great, and no one else was leaving, but we knew the weather would be worse the following day. Another boater saw us leave our mooring and asked, "You're leaving? Right now? Why?" We basically gave the same reply as the other Manta did yesterday -- we have to be somewhere, and the weather might get worse so we're leaving now. I'm pretty sure we wouldn't make that same decision today. What a difference a year makes.