Cuttyhunk, Mel Gibson, and the Harbor Hurricane

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Prospective

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Had a great weekend on Cutty. Nice trip over on Friday. A little breezy so spent the day swimming off the boat in the pond rafted to two friends on a mooring.

Saturday was the best beach day of the year. High 70's lite breeze. Gourgous. People were flocking to the island in bow riders, kayaks, and 55 Gallon drums. Anything that would float. Saw a MONSTER blue hulled yacht anchor in the outer harbor. Had to be 250ft. Turns out it was Mel Gibson. I guess the Ex didn't get that. Anyway, I am telling anyone who will listen that I spent Labor Day hanging with Mel on our yachts....

Saturday night the fun started. Dead calm at 10pm. Heard the wind going at midnight. Got up to check lines and it was about 15knts. At 1am started to hear horn signals and shouting. Came out on deck to 25kts. Wind peaked around 7am at 30ktns sustained. Anchored boats and rafts of boats breaking free from the anchorage in Cutty's notoriously bad holding ground of eel grass and dragging down on moored boats. Boats desperately trying to reset in a tight field. This went on for the next 9 hours. SeaTow was having a field day. Our yacht club had 25 boats there. Fortunatly all on moorings. But a call went out for an MD to help a guy who had torn open his hand while untying from an anchored raft in the middle of the night. Good thing we had 3!

Sunday day was sunny but windy. So spent time ashore. Lobster boil that night at Seth Garfields. My first of the season. Monday was a beautiful ride back in calm seas. All in all a super weekend.
 
Weird

The winds Saturday night were incredible. Forecast was 5-10 from the NNE. We were at Third Beach on a mooring. We had 2 30+ and a 21' walk around rafted on a mooring that the harbor master said was "huge" I know that one of the other town moorings is a 2000lb mushroom.

Same story, light winds from the S at 10 PM when we went to bed, Wind picked up around 12:30-1:00 to about 15 kts from NE. Lots of wave action coming down the Sakonnet river into Third beach cove. Wave slap was loud and boat was moving pretty well. I checked the status every 15 minutes or so. The wind kept building. At 2:30 my friends fired up their motors. We were dragging the mooring (2000lbs my A$$. We had 6 boats with us in total, three of the boast were on solo moorings.

We were drifitng toward one of our friends boats. He heard the engiens going and started his up and dropped the mooring. The walk around with us also launched. My wife got the dinghy on the davits and the fuel tank off while I started the motors (Thank god they fired right away). I pulled the dinghy motor but left the dinghy on the davits as I ran out of time.

We cast off from our friends and they dropped the mooring. By that time they were over the mooring behind us. They waited ofr the mooring ball to pop up over the side of the boat before engaging the transissions.

I stopped a little way up the Sakonnet to secure the dinghy. Wind was howling about 25-30 kts. Waves were 2-4 in the Sakonnet. There is really no shelter from that kind of wave action so we headed north up to Potter's Cove on Prudence Island. Luckily our two moorings were open (We would have grabbed an ymooring at that point. We got to PC at 5:15 am or so which made for a long night. Just glad that my radar worked well.

The ride was beautiful excpet for the wind. Along the way, we encountered a boat that apparently broke the ground tackle on a mooring. We tried to hail anyone aboard but the boat was empty.

Definitely a weird wind event. Not sure why it was so poorly forecasted. I had friends in Salt Pond on Block island that reported the same types of events you had in Cutty. I heard Tow Boat US tell the CG that it woudl be an hour before they could get to a boater that called in as they were recalling another captain. They already had 3 boast aground. I also heard that a sailboat went aground off Conimicut.

All in all an eventful evening but the 5 of us who left arrived safely. The 6th boat rode it out on the mooring and joined us in the morning (Which was the safest move for his boat). It's our first encounter with a nighttime crisis on the boat but years of submarine work don't go away that quickly :)I wa just glad we weren't heavily drinking or anything (Not that we usually do)

Glad it worked out for you. Tell Mel we think Lethal Weapon was his best work.
 
Scott,

I thought about you at 3rd beach. Not the place to be in a NE wind. We had several friends at Dutch Harbor rafted on moorings too. They got pounded as well. I am glad you made it to Potters in one piece. The inner harbor at Cutty is similar, only a small channel entrace. So the chop inside was minimal given the wind. Another option in that situation on the sakonnet might be the lee of Fogland Point. But I would take a mooring at Potters over that. That nighttime crisis stuff is scary. We were secure on our mooring but all I could think about all night was what I would do if on anchor. I had my master engine ignitions on, a flashlight at the helm and made sure all my lines were ready to cast off. Not sure what else I could do.
 
glad you guys made it! forecasts are always just that... forecasts. although in all fairness to NOAA, here is the forecast issued saturday late morning:

ANZ233-060315-
VINEYARD SOUND-
1114 AM EDT SAT SEP 5 2009

.THIS AFTERNOON...N WINDS AROUND 5 KT...BECOMING E LATE. SEAS
1 TO 2 FT.
.TONIGHT...SE WINDS AROUND 5 KT...BECOMING N WITH GUSTS UP TO
20 KT AFTER MIDNIGHT. SEAS 1 TO 2 FT.
.SUN...NE WINDS 10 TO 15 KT WITH GUSTS UP TO 25 KT. SEAS AROUND
2 FT.
.SUN NIGHT...E WINDS 10 TO 15 KT WITH GUSTS UP TO 20 KT...
DIMINISHING TO 5 TO 10 KT AFTER MIDNIGHT. SEAS AROUND 2 FT.
.MON...E WINDS 5 TO 10 KT...BECOMING SE IN THE AFTERNOON. SEAS
AROUND 2 FT.

when you start seeing 25kts gust in a forecast, it pays to expect a little more than that just in case.

been there (trusted the forecast)... done that (stayed up all night!)...

this is why i really dont' like rafting up overnight, you never know what you're going to get! when you're on your own, the chances of dragging are less and you have more option, starting with the fact that it's much easier to get underway.

In those situations, at night, using your GPS plotter zoomed in very close, can really help you see if you're holding or not, or see how bad you're dragging.
 
Pascal,

I couldn't agree more. But I have to confess, I didn't look at the forecast. We were on a mooring and inside the harbor so I wasn't really worried about it. If I had been on an anchor I would probably have paid more attention. As it was, we were fine and there was minimal chop inside the harbor. The real danger was anchored boats dragging into the mooring field. And there's not much I could do about that except stay vigilent I guess. But rest assured I wouldn't go to sleep at anchor rafted to another boat after seeing what I saw that night.
 
i got caught last fall, in Cape Look Out bight... forecast was for 25 to 30kts i think and we got over 45kts... lesson learned!

so there were boats anchroed in the inner harbor? i didn't think there was much room to anchor out inside. I was there a couple of weeks ago (at the dock), very nice place!
 
We were safe and sound on a slip in Mystic, but noticed the wind pick up on Sunday. Turned on the VHF for the forecast and was surprised about the wind - wow where did that come from - a mini Perfect Storm. Glad we were not out there. A friend went to Cataument on the Cape Sat-Sunday. He came home to port in Westport through Buzz Bay, took a pounding. We herd Block was a mess. Hope Tom made out okay?
 
Pascal,

When we checked the forecast we still had 5-10 overnight in Narragansett Bay. I suspect the winds came further east than forecast originally.

Is there a way to see the historical forecasts?
 
http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=NWS&format=CI&version=1&glossary=0&highlight=off&issuedby=BOX&product=CWF click on the nrs at the top to find the right date
 
Pascal, you can anchor inside. The inside anchorage is in the NE corner of the pond. It is tight and depth can be an issue. You wouldn't be sticking Charmer in there :-) Unfortunatly for everyone, the wind was out of the NE and there's just a little bite of land seperating the pond from Buzzards. So the wind was coming right in. And with the anchored boats to the NE of the moored boats, they were dragging down on folks. That area of the pond is also covered with eel grass. My understanding is that can be a real bear to anchor in. In fact, we saw many of the boats that dragged cruising around in the pond looking for a home. Their anchors were hanging of the bows with huge bushes of eel grass on them.
 
Thanks Pascal

As I thought the overnight forecast as of Saturday night didn't mention it for the ones I looked at.

ANZ236-061415-
NARRAGANSETT BAY-
1034 PM EDT SAT SEP 5 2009

.OVERNIGHT...N WINDS AROUND 5 KT...INCREASING TO 5 TO 10 KT LATE.
WAVES 1 FOOT OR LESS.
.SUN...NE WINDS 10 TO 15 KT WITH GUSTS UP TO 20 KT. WAVES 1 TO
2 FT.

ANZ235-061415-
RHODE ISLAND SOUND-
1034 PM EDT SAT SEP 5 2009

.OVERNIGHT...N WINDS AROUND 5 KT...INCREASING TO 5 TO 10 KT LATE.
SEAS 2 TO 3 FT.
.SUN...NE WINDS 10 TO 15 KT WITH GUSTS UP TO 20 KT. SEAS 2 TO
4 FT.

My guess is the front was either stronger than predicted, or further east.

Live and learn
 
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