Nice work, Fred. Glad all are OK.<br><br>Ed J.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Frederick Jackson <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jacksonfa@earthlink.net">jacksonfa@earthlink.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">The admiral and I left Sarnia, Ontario to sail 136 naut. mi. up Lake Huron to Tobermory, Ontario.<br>
we were sailing along nicely on a beam reach in 25 knots of wind. Great sailing. I was watching weather developing east of us over Michigan. Watching means monitoring my XM weather radar and data download. The four storm cells would all pass south of us, and it look like all we wouold get is rain. But as the nasty stuff approached, I decided to reef the main just in case. As I did, I felt the wind increase some, so I decided to get the main down. The wind keept increasing and the admiral, at the helm was reading wind velocities to me. So I furled the genoa. In about 5 minutes, the wind went from 25 knots, to a steady 54 knots, with at least one gust to 60 knots. This lasted for 20 minutes. I had heard of these line squalls when I grew up sailing the New England coast, but I never experienced one. Even with the sails down, when broadside to this wind, the boat laid over pretty good. I chose to head at the huge waves and wind at about 20 degrees off head on. This s<br>
eemed to work well. I had to use all of the M35B's guts, and I was glad I have the 3 blade MaxProp. I was concerned enough to Pan Pan the Canadian Coast Guard to let them know we were there, and give them position. Glad I have the remote mic. in the cockpit.<br>
<br>
Amante handled this fine, no damage. We were towing our dinghy, and this line squall came on so fast, I did not have a chance to shorten the painter. At one point, Amante was going down a wave crest with the dinghy still in the following trough. The painter broke and the dinghy floated off to parts unknown. I reported the lost dinghy to the Coast Guard. Fortunately, the motor was not on the dinghy. Frankly, given what we went through, the loss of the dinghy seems like a minor consequence.<br>
<br>
Fred J.<br>
Amante #2209<br>
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