Mediterranean Winter Arrives with a BANG!

35 Knots for 48 hours, Highest we saw was in the high 40's

We left a day early from Cyprus to Herzliya because there was some big weather coming in – really big weather – with force 8 and 9 winds – up to 50 knots, lots of rain and big-big waves. You now how sometimes you get a severe weather forecast and it never arrives, and other times they’re right on the money … well this time it was maybe a bit understated.



We started Friday with preparing the boat. This includes packing the Bimini away (for the information of those in BC, a Bimini is a big piece of canvas that covers the cockpit and shelters you from the sun …. Something that we have never needed before in British Columbia), and then “sewing” the boat to the dock with a bunch of mooring lines. In the end we had the two anchors off the bow cleats,
a long line to 

This is what happens when your boat isn't well
prepared for high winds. About 10,000 miles
of wear and tear per hour. 

the middle of the boat on the windward side, and then 6 lines off the back in a variety of angles criss-crossing the transom. We also doubled up the lines securing the dinghy to the bow, repositioned the halyards so they wouldn’t chafe, and checked that the sails were rolled up properly.


The other part of the process is to make sure that your neighbours are well cared for too … because if they have trouble, you have trouble.




Late Friday afternoon the wind started to howl. Our wind instruments put it in the low 30’s with gusts to the high 30’s and occasionally 40 knots. It was Scirocco because the wind and rain were accompanied by lots of gritty Sahara sand. The sand gets everywhere and combined with the salt can probably wreak havoc with any moving parts on the deck.


The waves on the outside of the breakwater continued to grow and grow and grow. The wind kept blowing at more than 30 knots for 48 hours. The worst was Sunday night when we 

Marina after 1 minute adjusting the lines.
Sideways rain is powerful

regularly had gusts to 45 knots and by this time the waves were massive – 7-9 meters and regularly breaking over top of the marina breakwater. (Check out this youtube video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UZxLxvAPGk&feature=BF&list=QL&index=1 .While it was surprisingly comfortable inside the boat, not that noisy or with difficult motion, when you went on deck it was crazy. Walking on shore was really difficult and some of the time you needed to lean 45 degrees into the wind. On Saturday walking through the marina I counted more than 10 genoas that had gotten loose and shredded. Countless dodgers and biminis were destroyed, I saw that one boat sank at its mooring, as well as damage to the docks themselves. The marina uses welded bollards bolted to the concrete floats. I saw four of these bollards broken off at the weld – and that is really unusual. The result for a boat right near us was that he lost his side mooring line and spent an hour smashing up against his neighbour until we tied him off again.


I went for a coffee with Schmulik and Ruthie, Yael’s father and mother, and he told me that it was a once in 20 years storm – and showed me pictures of TelAviv that was damaged much worse than Herzliya.


The power of the waves was such that a Russian freighter sank in Haifa and 15 sailors needed to be rescued. My guess is that there will be quite a few insurance claims and that if you want any canvas work done in Israel you’ll be waiting for quite some time. If I had a sewing machine, I’d open up a business.

After the Storm the Sun Comes Out