How to Plan for Heavy Weather at Sea - Storm Tactics
It's very important to be prepared for storms because, just knowing you have a plan is knowing that you've prepared to handle heavy weather will give you confidence when you get off-shore. But you should also put the whole thing in perspective. Harragance and Hitchcock circled the globe three times in boats varying from thirty-three feet up to forty-nine feet, and they kept track of wind speeds they encountered over 150,000 miles of cruising. And their average came out to ten to twelve knots. Well our experiences and percentages are a little different, because as you know, we just came from rounding Cape Horn. We've sailed to the south latitudes. We've also delivered boats. And it's really interesting to note that nobody asks you to deliver their boat on a fair wind, downwind passage. So, usually we get paid to take boats across heavy weather areas or during heavy weather seasons. And yet, we've still found, that over a hundred and seventy thousand miles of Sailing together, Larry Pardey and I have had about six percent of the time at sea in winds above force 7. And probably only one, one and half percent of that time, have we had to use real storm tactics because the winds blew so fiercely that we had to lay hove-to. So, it is important to put it all in perspective and it's also important to remember that you can't avoid heavy weather if you cruise long enough, if you cross oceans. A lot of people are being told and believing that if you buy a boat fast enough, if you have enough weather information before you set sail, you can avoid storms. They tell you, get a weather router, he'll route you around storms. It is possible, even without all the outside assistance, just by studying a book like Alan Watts Instant Weather Forecasting and practicing on your own. You can choose good patches of weather to leave port and make the first part of your voyage storm free. And you want to do that. But, once you are at sea, there's going to come a time when a storm catches you out there. If you're prepared, you handle it well, it will turn your cruising with heavy weather into interesting adventures and the storm will not be the end of your cruise.