Wind, Wind, and More Wind

Our little corner of the dock

Debonair

As we work on our to-do list to button up the boat for the summer, we are struck by the intensity of the wind.  Here in the boatyard and marina docks, the wind moans and whistles and rattles through the rigging of all of the boats all day and most of the night. We are reassured that we really  made the right decision, as the wind is a steady 25 mph, lashing through with gusts up to 35 mph. The seas are high, too - 8 to 11 feet right now. Much too high for a 30-foot boat.

A normal pattern in Curacao, as with most islands in the tropical trade-wind belt, the wind will die down close to sunset, known as a katabatic wind. "Katabatic" has a Greek origin, meaning to "flow downhill". As the land cools down at sunset, the heat given off rises and counteracts the steady trade winds coming out of the east. The stronger the trade wind, the less effect the land will have. Right now, our wind has a lull right at sunset and then starts up again a half-hour later, keeping up a fresh breeze until almost midnight. Then it starts up again at 4 a.m., lasting all day long.

What's with such stronger than normal wind? No one seems to know, but as I look at the weather forecasting tools, no let-up is in sight. It's not just here, in the south-central Caribbean, but the entire route we plan to take across the Caribbean Sea. So we did make the right decision - coupled with the first tropical storm of the season forming off the coast of Florida and the Carolinas last week, a full three weeks earlier than the "official" start of the hurricane season.

Today we finished the last big project to secure the boat - Larry went diving on the hull. We needed to have the boat's hull clean, bag up the propeller to keep marine growth off of it, and check the sacrificial zincs on the hull. Everything we do is made harder by the relentless lash of wind all day long. We have to pace ourselves for outdoor work, taking refuge below decks. Even there, the whistling of the wind is almost constant, at times moaning like a ghost. Our boat's cabin feels like a cozy sanctuary from the wind.

Dutch Word of the Day:

Poespas

 

A Dutch word we really like for a boat name is pictured above - Poespas, seen on the boom. The owner told us that this means "a collection of small problems". What a great name for a boat! Every boat owner knows that to have a boat means to always be working on one thing or another. We meet interesting people every week here.