Welp…

I got a text message from a friend yesterday as we were having our glorious sail across the Gulf of Maine (and I’ll leave it to someone smarter than me to explain how we have a better data connection on our devices when we’re 5 miles offshore than when we are sitting in a harbor within sight of a city). My buddy was texting about Hurricane Dorian forecasts, and were we concerned? At the time, the last track I’d seen showed Dorian veering off into the North Atlantic well before it came near New England, and I told him I wasn’t worried. I’m still not worried, and I’ll get into the why of that in a minute, because I want to ease folks’ minds about our situation (Hi Mom!). But first…

This is a big, bad hurricane. It’s going to cause a lot of damage. Puerto Rico and the Virgins were spared because it was just starting to blow up when in crossed over them, but the Bahamas have been smashed. We have some good friends who recently bought a house and a boat in Grand Bahama. We just heard from them that the house and boat are both gone. We have some other friends who own a 1/6th share in a boat in Great Abaco- haven’t heard from them yet, but we just read a report that there are no boats left floating in Great Abaco, so it’s doubtful theirs has survived. Having gone through this ourselves two years ago, I feel sick for them. It’s horrible.

So when we settled in to Isles of Shoals last night, I checked the latest weather data. I have some pretty sophisticated weather apps on my iPad, and I’m getting pretty good at using them to plan passages. I was surprised to see how close Dorian is forecast to pass us. Here’s a picture (this is the forecast time of closest approach/highest winds, Saturday at 2 am):

This is a lot closer than I expected this thing to pass. That’s right off the coast of Cape Cod- Nantucket is going to have a pretty nasty Friday night. But notice the notes I’ve added. We will be safely tucked into Salem Harbor when this thing blows by- see the cross-hairs at the end of the arrow? The other arrow points to the expected wind strength in the cross-hair. It’s only 29 knots, from the North. Go get in your car and drive 30 mph down the street and stick your arm out the window. It’s not that bad.

And more, here is a view of Salem Harbor:

We will be safely tied up to a mooring somewhere in the blue oval. See the yellow arrows? That’s the North wind- see how little water it passes over before it gets to us? That means the waves and chop will not have room to develop. We’ll probably get tossed around a bit, but probably no more than when a lobster boat passes by and kicks up a big wake. We are pretty used to that now.

We will have favorable winds tomorrow to sail from Isles of Shoals to Salem (Tuesday). We will hunker down there until this thing passes (Saturday). Waiting for a weather window. The long range forecasts show favorable winds to cross Cape Cod Bay from Salem to the Cape Cod Canal on Sunday, so that’s the tentative plan. Tentative because of three things:

1. A Saturday forecast is five days out. It will change, for better or worse.
2. It’s a forecast, not a guarantee.
3. Cape Cod Bay could still be quite rough after all this goes by. Again, the forecasts will become clearer and more accurate as time passes.

We will keep you posted!