The day started pretty meekly with 10 knots of wind and partly sunny skies. Environment Canada (Canada’s national weather service) was forecasting 30 knots by the afternoon with water spouts, but hard to believe when things look so calm. Many a captain ventured out today, even a little trailer sailor family with a reluctant wife and 2 kids under age 5. Then the wind and rain hit with a one/two punch at 3p.m. howling out of the west with 25-30-35 knots of wind. The North Channel is more protected than open Lake Huron, but even the Channel was showing 6+ foot waves at the buoy.
The marine radio was alive with broadcasts of a sailboat going aground, anchors dragging in island anchorages and a powerboat hitting a reef. Canadian Coast Guard was sorting all of this out, and luckily boaters were helping other boaters. It is a small community and every boater knows that the next time it could be them in an emergency situation.
These are the same winds that we had 7/17 in Government Bay when our anchor dragged 200 feet on a very stormy, scary night. Today was a different story as we took shelter in the Spanish marina as we were betting that the EC forecast was correct. Hearing that banshee wind howling goes to your core wherever you are, but today all we had to do was take down our bimini top so that it would not get bent.
At the end of the storm, Mother Nature offers a bit of an apology by displaying a fantastic rainbow.
