I Was In Force 6 Winds!

…in the safety of a harbor, tied to a dock…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale

“Beaufort Scale” Force 6’s are defined as 25-30 mph winds.  There was an official Wind Advisory for the area and a Coastal Flooding Notice because of the winds off shore at Gale-force strength could whip up waves. Honestly, it wasn’t anything bad at all, just like the kind of strong gusts we’re all used to. However it got A Cenoura to shake and tug a lot with the dock. I woke up often to the real feeling of an earthquake. Below is a video taken at 4:45am on 12-19-2012 from inside, just to give you an idea of the typical movement throughout the night.

I stepped out and saw a few sailboats’ roller-furling headsails had rattled and twisted loose. It sounded like drums beating as other boats sails were flapping hard in the wind. I walked to the two sailboats I had access to on my dock who were affected, and pulled their furling line in (to roll the sail back up tightly) and secured the line. I figure some people who don’t get to visit their boat that often must have come back from a leisure sail one summer afternoon, plainly tied off the line to keep the furling unit in place, and never thought twice about winter storm winds in a few months. Hopefully I didn’t violate some code-of-conduct around here. I figure I saved someone a couple thousand dollars because they won’t have to replace a shredded sail.  Unfortunately some damage could be seen once the sun came up. Life jackets and miscellaneous seat covers had been blown around, mostly ending up in the water. A kayak got loose, its paddle somewhere else entirely. 

A Cenoura held up well as expected, though, just bumpy. I’m wondering if the earthquake feeling would be less if I loosened the lines and let her bounce back and forth slowly. The way the lines are tied are pretty tight, more like she was strapped to the dock. Trials and errors.