It's not a position anyone wants to find themselves in. Sitting at anchor with a category 4 hurricane heading straight for you!
The usual mundane problems of life become insignificant and all focus goes to the storm. As everyone knows though a forecast isn't really much more than an educated guess when it comes to weather, there have been major improvements for sure but there is no certainty in this.
The track of the storm is all important a difference of 20 miles can be the difference between experiencing a bit of a stiff 30-40 knot blast and a boat breaking 150 knot mailstrom.
It's not something I fully appreciated until witnessing it first hand but hurricanes are almost closed systems, getting just that little bit away can mean you feel virtually no effect fr4om them whatsoever. On the flip side being within one the effect you will feel is massively dependent on positioning. The strongest winds in a hurricane are on the inner wall, frightening concrete smashing forces, the next strongest is the front right leading edge as the hurricane moves, this 'fat side' can extend out further than elsewhere and is more difficult to escape from.
The good thing about being in a boat of course is that you can move! So when the track of hurricane Beryl moved from crossing near the South coast of St Vincent down to just off the North coast of Grenada this was too close. If the forecast was spot on we would experience strong, but hopefully not unmanageable wings in the South of Grenada. If there was a further 20-30 mile wobble to the South though we would be toast!
So began the mass exodus from Grenada, a fleet of little ships probably not seen on this scale since Dunkirk!
This video tells the whole story and was put together in difficult circumstances as things happened so if you enjoy it please do make the effort to press the subscribe button it costs you nothing and helps us out a lot as KZfaq may actually suggest our videos to people instead of burying them!
If you're interested in some of the things we showed in this episode I've got some website links below;
Ecoflow: We've found them to have the best solar generators so we also got their portable Aircon unit and now their fridge. We recommend them all.
EcoFlow US:bit.ly/46BfWPz
EcoFlow UK: bit.ly/46G9aYh
Vision Anchor: We will do a little test video on this unit when we've had a chance to use it properly, but I'm impressed with the build of this little smart marker buoy so could be a useful thing;
www.visionanchor.net/
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