Challenging Weather

For the last 6 years, we were typically coming to the boat for 1 or 2 nights per month (plus holidays). We generally didn't come if the forecast included wind gusts over about 40mph.

Now that we are living on the boat, we are finding that there are strong winds more than we realised. At the moment, we have at least a few hours with gusts over 50 mph a couple of times each week.

Friday this week is looking particularly bad. The Met Office is forecasting gusts from ENE (the direction we have the least protection from) of up to 57mph. The Windy app shows some weather models have gusts up to 60mph.

So on Thursday (which should be dry and fairly calm), I need to make sure that our new aft solar panels don't take off when the wind hits them first.

I think the easiest way will be to add a crossbar at ground level and weigh it down with some big, heavy, boatyard timber that is generally used to support boats.

We think we will go and do our weekly shopping Friday afternoon as it will be hard to do anything but sit, listen to the wind and worry about the shaking.

The good news is that once we are sailing, we will know that all the solar panels have already handled more wind than we will want to be sailing in. When anchored, it would be very odd to have the wind coming from behind, so this is not what we will have to put up with in the future (because the boat will normally face into the wind when anchored).

We hope that by Friday, our new wind speed instrument will be working and give us some real, actual numbers. However, it is solar-powered and there has not been enough sunlight so far this week to charge it enough to power on. 😛