Catalina Sunshine: FRANTIC THUNDER STORM AT CAPE MAY

2030 hours June 23, 2015, Cape May, New Jersey: As Chris Parker had predicted we were hit with a sever thunder storm. Winds from the west gusted over 45 nmph, with driving rain. The only place for transients to anchor in Cape May, is in a narrow anchorage in front of the Coast Guard Station. As this anchorage is usually full, as it was this night, most anchor with a short rode. A French flagged sailboat broke loose and caught his anchor in on another boats chain, crashing into the side of that boat. Then, under power the French flagged boat tried to break loose, powering back and forth in an erratic fashion being juried and pulled by the caught anchor chain from the other sailboat. Seeing this through the driving rain on the port side of our pilot house, with near misses, we called the Coast Guard on the VHF, as no one else had called. Finally after about twenty minutes and several additional conversations they arrived and rescued the French flagged boat still darting back and forth between chain jerks.

With the anchor lines untangled the Coast Guard hauled away the French Flagged boat. As it turned out the boat whose anchor line was caught was also French flagged. They then dragged across our stern slowly. I tried to communicate with them but no one on the boat spoke English. They finally dragged out into the center of the channel away from our boat and I went to bed, with the worst of the storm having passed.

The next morning we headed for Sandy Hook with less than 10 nmph of breeze. The following day, in similar weather, we powered at about 9.5 nmph along the south side of Long Island to Block Island.

On next day, June 26, 2015, we headed from Block Island to Hyannis Port. Chris Parker was predicting a two day Gale starting the next day, and as we wanted to be at dock in a safe port, we moved up our reservations at Hyannis Port. Unlike the two previous days of under 10 knots of breeze, the wind was 18 to 20 on our passage from Block Island.