Squall II

With our last severe weather experience 10 days in our wake, we had a somewhat restored confidence in mother nature.  That all changed last week as we were sitting quietly in Great Guana Key, on a mooring ball, watching some "Breaking Bad" on the laptop.  There were some dark clouds on the horizon but it was certainly nothing to panic about.  We were, after all, tethered to a mooring ball.  Just a nice lazy afternoon.....THEN BAM!  Out of nowhere, a wall of rain and wind hit us.  We heeled over violently.  It felt serious.  Marianne looked out and saw a sailboat coming in to the harbour, just off our bow.  It was out of control and hit a boat just next to ours and then ran aground. I jumped out to the cockpit and tried to get our engine started but was virtually blinded by the wind and the rain.  I grabbed a snorkel mask and kept struggling to start the motor.  At that point the rails were almost in the water.  The cockpit bimini was shaking and about to rip to shreds.  I looked over to our left and saw a trawler get caught up in a neighboring sailboat.  Now at this point it appeared our mooring was holding. We were going to pull through, maybe?  But then.....crack! We looked up, the mooring ball was nowhere in sight.  Seems we'd sailed up over it, on our bare poles, and our rudder was slamming down on the cement block used to secure the mooring line.  I hit reverse, full power.  Back in position, nose to the wind where we rode out the remainder of the squall.

Things finally died down and the sun came out.  Peace was restored.  The whole event lasted only 15 minutes.  15 minutes of pure chaos.  We almost fell over the next morning when we heard the winds were clocked at 74 miles/hr.  All things considered, I think we were pretty lucky.  Of the 6 boats in the harbor: 2 had their dinghies flipped over (outboard engines and all), 2 collided with other boats, 1 ran aground.....and us, relatively unscathed with only a slight chip out of our rudder.  Remarkably, there was little to no damage to the other boats.

Afterwards, a local guy and his daughter came by in a small boat to help out.  He looked at us with a big smile and said, "Having fun yet?"  Funny thing is, to the locals, this kind of weather is not out of the ordinary.  I think we're going to need to live through a few more squalls before we can adopt that kind of confidence :)

A neighbouring catamaran captured this video footage of the squall.  You can see Maranatha in the beginning of the clip, on the left side of the frame.  WHEEEE!!!!