Life Aboard: Weather to Stay or Go

Weather is by far one of the most important aspects of life aboard. In our daily operations, no other single force effects our decisions as much. It’s also one of the most underestimated sources of stress aboard. Even subconsciously, the weather is always in the back of our minds, on low simmer. Such was the case one late-spring morning in Cape May, New Jersey. When turning in the night before, our plan was to run up the Jersey shore the next day. However, on this particular morning, we discovered that a cold front that was supposed to stall over the Appalachian Mountains was now forecasted to continue on to the Eastern Seaboard by mid-afternoon.

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This new forecast now created a significant problem. We typically depart Cape May late in the afternoon and round Sandy Hook just after sunrise 15 hours later. Under the pending forecast, we would be leaving just as things were getting gnarly offshore. Along much of the east coast, if the seas are too much, we can always stay in the ICW and still make progress. The New Jersey shore unfortunately doesn’t give us that option, as the waterway running behind New Jersey’s barrier islands is too shallow for us.

So why not just wait it out and continue north behind the cold front? Of course, we could have, but we were already breaking two well-known rules of cruising: The first—don’t cruise according to schedule, cruise when conditions are safe. The second rule involves having guests aboard—you may join us “where” you would like, or “when” you would like, but you can’t pick “both.”

Guilty on both counts, we had guests flying into Newark and meeting us at Liberty Landing Marina in Jersey City. After lots of conversation, we agreed on a compromise of making a short run up to Atlantic City, before the front arrived and where we could wait for our guests to take the train down to rendezvous with us.

As the captain of your vessel, you are ultimately responsible for all of the decisions aboard. But when you live on a cruising yacht with a partner, you not only have a responsibility for the safety of the boat, but an equal responsibility to your partner. More often than not, decisions are made together. Most of the time it’s easy. Take our trip above; my wife Dori and I were in agreement that we weren’t running up the Jersey shore with a nor’easter on our tail. Other times, it’s really hard—we had a one-night stop planned in Belhaven, North Carolina, followed by an overnight run to Charleston with what looked like a perfect weather forecast.

When dawn broke in Belhaven, the winds were howling and had us pinned hard against the dock. If we could get off the dock, we still had to run parallel to it for about 200 feet, then squeeze between a rock jetty and a T-head at the end. Staying there another day meant missing our weather window for the overnight to Charleston. We absolutely could not agree on whether it was safe to leave.

If we could get away from the marina, we’d be fine out in open water, but I had to admit, it wasn’t a sure thing that we could get off the dock. My best attempts to assure Dori we could do this were not working.

As I’m writing this, it’s occurring to me, this piece isn’t about decisions made around weather, it’s about how we communicate with each other and make joint decisions. That morning in Belhaven, saying: “Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” wasn’t going to convince Dori of anything. I needed to not only tell her that I had a plan; I needed to explain to her how the spring lines and fenders were going to be configured to make this work. She needed to visualize what I was going to do with the thrusters and rudders, and most importantly, what her role would be and how she could help. Once we had this conversation; once she was a part of the solution and not just paralyzed by the fear of the problem, we were able to agree the plan had a decent chance of working.

Life aboard gives us many opportunities to work on our relationship; it’s not unusual for me to think we’re discussing something like the weather, when the conversation is actually about so much more.

This article originally appeared in the March 2024 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.

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Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/voyaging/life-aboard-weather-to-stay-or-go