Our recent posts resulted in some questions, and we'll try to cover some of them.
There is definitely some discrepancy in the way various people measure waves. I have tended to measure them from how they affect the boat, and the worst we really felt on the crossing from Newport were the 10 footers with sharp or breaking tops. However, these did occur with the 4 foot cross waves, and both the 4 footers and 10 footers were occurring overtop a base of large ocean swells, which by themselves and even with the others didn't really cause us trouble - probably because of the large
distance between them. I considered the resultant monsters as mountains complete with foothills, when they all got together. We went up, then up, then uupp, as we would get lifted to the top. So, yes, some could say that there were 30 footers, but they didn't result in damage or trouble to a little 35' cat. The little buggers were shaking the stuffing out of us, however. Somebody on Branson's boat was quoted in the news as saying they saw 40 footers, but it may just be interpretation. Dawn
agrees with Branson's take on it.
Yes, we have encountered Richard Branson's racing sled: "Virgin Speedboat". If you haven't seen how beautiful it is, then you should google it. They checked in and arrived 3 hours before us. They were trying to break an Atlantic crossing record, but stove into a wave that trashed their giant spinnaker, and checked in here instead, with the effort blown with the sail. Branson flew out, and the big 98' red machine moved to dockside at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club in Hamilton. We assume that the
crew will move it back to NY for another try later. The storm has also chased some other boats into harbour, including a giant 3-masted Norwegian square rigged tall ship. The name of it is just a mess of letters to us, with little previous exposure to the Norse language.
We also met a nice British couple who have recently bought a Hylis 42, "White Winds", in the Chesapeake, and are heading to the BVI's shortly. They were using Herb, and arrived about the same time as Branson, just before us. They had a difficult time navigating the way into the harbour in the darkness, big waves and so many similar navigational aids. They succeeded only to get hung up inside the harbour on flat water on a little island. All is well now, and I'm sure we'll be spending some time
with them.
We're packing up to catch the bus into Hamilton to shop and snoop. We're not looking forward to the dinghy ride because of the huge chop here today in the harbour, but we've all put on yesterday's salty clothes, so it won't really matter.
Those of you who have questions, go ahead and send. We have intermittent wireless right now, and it isn't the problem we normally have trying to answer and receive by ham email.
Brian, Dawn, & Laurie
