Squalls at night in the atlantic

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Arcarius

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Hi all,
I have read a lot about squalls comming through that can have a lot of wind in them ! I also believe you can see these from a long way off and take action eg reefing sails .What happens at night can you still see them (eg blacker area in the sky ) sorry if a daft question but it would be nice to know !
Cheers in advance Gary
 
I agree with Tradewinds radar is good but power hungry. The squalls are almost impossible to see if it is an overcast night and the problem is the wind can go from 20 to fifty knots in a second or so.What most people do is reef down as it gets dark, especially if squalls are forecast. Thus daily forecast for your area are a must. If you have an SSB receiver you can listen to Herb Hildenberg, there will usually be boats in your area. Or if you have an SSB tranceiver you can get a free forcast for your position.
 
They do come on you unawares at night. Strong wind and cold rain. I experienced one that resulted in a broken spinnaker boom, part of which tore through the sprayhood and narrowly missed my head.
 
Radar is very good for tracking squalls .

I did not know that my radar was not working properly one particular night and I got hit. I had one reef in the main and full genoa out..
one minute gentle breeze then Whack!!!! blowing upto 40 knots..
Thunder and lightning all around us.. Manage to furl the headsail
but the main was pinned to the shrouds and unable to move. plus the boat was leaning right over. :eek:
It soon passed thank god.. Made a mess of the mainsail, ripped at the reefing point.

Was able to use main sail with 2 reefs in.. 1000 mile to the Azores


Not good if you suffer from a nervous disposition. :o
 
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You don't have to have the radar on blasting away all through the night.

We used it most nights with just 300ah of batteries on board - no problem (no solar panels fitted either when we did our Atlantic crossing).

Wouldn't be without it - especially if you're short-handed.

Like Kellys Eye we reefed down (from twins to just the No1 genoa) at night which helped the nerves somewhat.
 
Arcarius said:
Hi all,
I have read a lot about squalls comming through that can have a lot of wind in them ! I also believe you can see these from a long way off and take action eg reefing sails .What happens at night can you still see them (eg blacker area in the sky ) sorry if a daft question but it would be nice to know !
Cheers in advance Gary
Click to expand...


As far as I have seen the non-symmetric property (or whatever it is called :blush: ) seems to apply between dark colour/radar echo and strength: a strong squall usually has precipitation (hence radar echo) and the darker it appears the stronger the wind, but quite often a very dark cloud with a big echo gives just a mere +5kt gust...

We kept the radar off and turned it on when we saw lightning, just to try and avoid the worst; needless to say in the middle of the night there where black spots everywhere, it was impossible to escape. This is radar image in the middle of the ITCZ, the wind must have been just 20ish knots at the gust front, no more, the "thing" is a dozen miles wide in the rain area and new cells kept on forming all around.
The worst was *by far* the amount of lightning rather than wind, three nights with dozens of lightnings falling all around the boat are very tough on the nerves, plus after the first night one falls short of prayers.

P1070554.jpg
 
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Thanks to all for some great information . I am now running scared ! worse than I thought but at least I can prepare for them !!

Tradewinds -Did you hand steer all the way or have wind vane steering ?
How often did you run your engine to charge your batteries ?
 
something that might help in deciding the amount of sail you keep: at around sunset, have a look at the sky, if the predominant type of cloud is horizontal (stratus and the like), then the chance of strong squalls is somewhat less, if otoh you see cumulus type clouds (predominant vertical development) that means that probability is a lot higher, in which case I personally put two reefs on before darkness

Depending on the type of boat, with a completely furled genoa and two reefs one might be able to withstand a lot of wind: instead of letting everything slam furiously, just keep it aft, enjoy (well...) the mad ride for half an hour while you steer, then things get back to normal.
If you have a crew then you can afford a lot more options, I usually am alone or with the family and this option has proved ok practically always.



As an curiosity, sometimes the squall wind does strange things: once I could not keep my jacket down, it kept inflating from down upwards like an umbrella (remember Marilyn Monroe keeping her skirt down, I was probably more like the Michelin little fat man), air bouncing on the sea
 
Arcarius said:
Thanks to all for some great information . I am now running scared ! worse than I thought but at least I can prepare for them !!

Tradewinds -Did you hand steer all the way or have wind vane steering ?
How often did you run your engine to charge your batteries ?
Click to expand...

Hydrovane - the dog's doodahs.

Running engine - honestly can't remember how often as it was back in '96. Probably an hour and a half morning & evening (no more) as we had a fridge with a eutectic plate that required running daily at these times. When I got to Trinidad I kitted myself out with solar panels & a wind generator (cheaper from the States back then). Good place to buy a dougbugger (now known as the KISS wind generator!).
 
Arcarius said:
Hi all,
I have read a lot about squalls comming through that can have a lot of wind in them ! I also believe you can see these from a long way off and take action eg reefing sails .What happens at night can you still see them (eg blacker area in the sky ) sorry if a daft question but it would be nice to know !
Cheers in advance Gary
Click to expand...

Single handed I used radar most nights using the wakeup setting so every 15 mins it would turn on and have a look around and sound an alarm if it saw anything. Useful as it gave time to get the bucket set under the gooseneck for drinking water and have the shampoo at the ready :cool: You need to be quick with the shampoo though, the squalls can go through very quick. :)

Think I was lucky though, never came across any really windy ones, even crossing the ITCZ.
 
Roberto said:
something that might help in deciding the amount of sail you keep: at around sunset, have a look at the sky, if the predominant type of cloud is horizontal (stratus and the like), then the chance of strong squalls is somewhat less, if otoh you see cumulus type clouds (predominant vertical development) that means that probability is a lot higher, in which case I personally put two reefs on before darkness

Depending on the type of boat, with a completely furled genoa and two reefs one might be able to withstand a lot of wind: instead of letting everything slam furiously, just keep it aft, enjoy (well...) the mad ride for half an hour while you steer, then things get back to normal.
If you have a crew then you can afford a lot more options, I usually am alone or with the family and this option has proved ok practically always.
Click to expand...
That's good advice.

My experience is that squalls are not associated with pitch-black nights - generally even at nights you can see the huge cumulus squally clouds coming for some distance. The tops may glow with lightning. Also the squalls don't last all that long, so there are no big seas, which make them far easier to cope with. As the squall cloud passes and the rain dies away, you can be left with no wind at all.

I have occasionally experienced line-squalls associated with a front, rather than cumulus, when the wind can keep blowing afterwards and the sea gets up. However, never when trade-wind sailing.

Arcarius, ocean squalls are not to be feared. As long as you are keeping a proper lookout you'll see your first one in plenty of time to get well reefed down or even hove-to, then if you don't fancy Roberto's mad ride sit it out, below if there is thunder, for half an hour, and get going again.
 
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yeehah squalls!

I blogged a bit about the squalls on few E-W transits on blog.mailasail.com/mojomo

Tracking the squalls with radar is handy cos really, when properly set up you want to catch those squalls and ride'm! Yeehah! And not be all scaredy frightened altho it mite take a few transits to be okay about them, and start hunting them.

I bought a special ocean spinnaker, 1.5oz material, good for up to 20knots AWS in the sail so yerknow, bound to be okay with 25ish really , and then if it's blowing at say 16knots as the squall comes in the wind will hit (first hit is strongest) at bout max 32 knots (generally, double general wind speed for max squall windspeed) and whoosh, then zip along at quite acceptable 14-17knots downwind with Wagner "Ride of the Valkyries" blaring away on the cockpit speakers.

I did once "fake" a squall to the rest of the crew - threw buckets of water around the cockpit, half undid all the zips, took t-shirt off and ripped the arms a bit and put it back on, threw loads of lifejackets around the place .... and they came up Ohmygawd! and i sed "Are you all aright? Well that's the main thing" and all v good value gag. But the next nite blimmin constant squalls one after the other and hand steering in up to 45 knots, and even had to wang the engine to increase dog and reduce chance of sails ripping. Squall gag not great preparation for this, not really.

You can catch up with boats a whole load bigger than you if you tear along with the wind, rather than wimpishly arg worry worry about the wind, which yerknow, was the main point of having a sailing boat, bit like buying a decent car and then pootling along instead of flooring it and seeing wottle it do, hm? And anyway, it's downwind and yerknow, what's the worst that can happen, hm? Ok, the sail blows out, or the mast comes down, whatever, saw it off and yerknow, memories, eh?

Webcraft was on board the last transit, and he loved it! Ok, when i say he loved it, what i really means is that he loved it afterwards, and has hardly spoken to me since. Altho I like to think that's mainly cos i am in Pacific and he's in Scotland.
 
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Roberto said:
. . . . We kept the radar off and turned it on when we saw lightning, . . . . . .
Click to expand...

Often, when down below, you will not see the first signs of lightning :(

It is best to use the saloon radio which has to have a LW band. Tune (de-tune) it to a frequency which does NOT carry a radio service. Turn radio on and tune to Long Wave and choose a frequency 219kHz or some such.

In this way, a lightning cell within 120-150 miles will crackle every time there is an electrical discharge. It is doubtful you would see an afternoon storm brewing OTH at 150 miles but the radio will warn you well in advance of pending troubles later in the night. :rolleyes:

This is also the indicator to place your EPIRB, PLB, H/H and any spare chart-plotter in the oven suitably wrapped in cooking foil (Faraday Cage). ;)

The first signs on the radio are crackling noises about every three minutes or so. When the crackles are at twenty second intervals, you know you are in for quite a bad storm and all this well before the wind and rain arrive! :eek:

ps: It works onshore too. :D
 
Conachair said:
Think I was lucky though, never came across any really windy ones, even crossing the ITCZ.
Click to expand...

Reckon I was lucky too. Canaries to Brazil - only one squall in which the wind went from force 2 to....erm....force 4 for all of five minutes. Less rain than an average Bank Holiday Monday.
 
KellysEye said:
I agree with Tradewinds radar is good but power hungry. The squalls are almost impossible to see if it is an overcast night and the problem is the wind can go from 20 to fifty knots in a second or so.What most people do is reef down as it gets dark, especially if squalls are forecast. Thus daily forecast for your area are a must. If you have an SSB receiver you can listen to Herb Hildenberg, there will usually be boats in your area. Or if you have an SSB tranceiver you can get a free forcast for your position.
Click to expand...

No: the winds DO NOT rise from "20 to fifty knts in a second or so" and altho it may (yet again) make you feel brave about your own one-off transat, it is not true. You own blog shew how unnecessarily and inappropriately frightened you were. You carefully logged how you had "almost an hour of F8" which is somewhat less than 50knots, and not in developed seas that one wd associate with "50knots" either.

False "tall tale" stories such as these do not help others, imho.
 
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