Ep 174 Three Days of Caribbean Squalls | Passage to Guadeloupe | Kevin & Wendy

In certain months of the Caribbean sailing season you can almost be assured of getting hit by squalls. As I mention in this episode, when doing short island-to-island hops, you can sometimes adjust your departure in such a way as to avoid them. But if you’re forced to sail between noon and three o’clock in the morning (I know, 0300), then you’re likely to be hit.

This is because the power of the sun is so great in the tropics that it forms thunderheads as water evaporates off the sea surface. These cells get very heavy, and rain squalls follow. The formation of a cell and the rain that follows can happen within the hour, so they often appear out of nowhere. During the height of squall activity, a near constant pattern of formation, accompanied by violent wind and rain, becomes the norm. Once a squall dissipates, another takes its place.

With practice and experience, a sailor can see the activity in advance, but is unlikely to be able to avoid it. It should be noted that furling the sails completely will allow a mid-sized sailboat to weather these squalls easily under power, but reefing and furling in advance is the key. As you’ll see in the video, at one point I mention that I can see the wind-line approaching. At that point I had about one to two minutes to “do something” if I wasn’t already prepared. And once a squall hits, making sail adjustments becomes much harder. A blown out sail often happens this way.

Squalls, like other storms, are small low-pressure systems, and low-pressure systems rotate counterclockwise (high-pressure systems are the opposite, spinning clockwise). This is why a high-pressure system and a low-pressure system in close proximity can create very high winds. It becomes like a baseball pitching machine, with two opposing wheels that launch the ball. But knowing how the winds are drawn into the cell and which direction they will take is a real skill that can help you sail smarter and get to where you’re going faster.




























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