EKP
Member II
My E29 is currently located in the Neuse River about 40 miles inland in North Carolina.. I've had it anchored next to where a few boats are moored for about a month, waiting for a decent weather window to get her down to the marina on base. I had been watching the weather forecast of the tropical storm/hurricane all week. Worried about my boat not being in a safe place to weather the storm, a good friend of mine and I decided it would be best to move her to a different location and ride out the storm. The river there is about a mile wide and about 12ft deep at its deepest point. The forecast for the area showed the wind not getting over 45knots with gusts. Plenty of people have solo sailed in much worse. I figured we could get some good heavy weather sailing experience. I have solo sailed off the coast in small craft advisories before, so I'm not totally green to poor conditions. So with all of the necessary safety gear ready, we weighed anchor about an hour before before the wind was suppose to kick up. I decided beforehand that I wasn't even going to worry with the mainsail, I had the 135 genoa unfurled about 90% of the way as the wind picked up to around 20knots. We cruised around like that for a while, and decided to haul in the sail and toss out the anchor until the wind kicked up more. An hour or so later the wind steadied closer to 30 knots, it was time to get back at it. Unfurled just a scrap of the genoa and we were off. Slowly as the wind picked up and the gusts got more powerful, I would haul in the genoa until we had about 25 sqft out. We cruised around like this until about 11 O'clock. The eye wasn't suppose to hit for another five hours. The wind was gusting at 45 knots and we we're getting tired of getting rained on, we decided to head up river some and set the anchor in the middle of the river and spend the night there. At this point I had been up for about 40 hours, as I had just finished a 24 hour shift at work, I had barracks duty the night before. With the anchor set in 9 feet of water, I let out about 100 feet of rhode. We waited a little while to see if the boat was going to drag it, it didn't budge. I fixed our position on the GPS and set my alarm for every hour so I could wake up and check to make sure we weren't dragging it. The alarm would sound, I'd check my phone to see that we were good, and I would pass back out. I woke up for the last time at six AM, the eye had already passed, and for the most part it had stopped raining. We made it, I understand it was a risky decision to stay out there, but I just didn't trust my boat would be safe where it was anchored. All in all it was a good time. Can't beat high winds, beers, and a good sailing partner.
