New Videos

Visit the Ship's Log page to view videos from our 2006 Summer Cruise to Door County.

Thunderstorms

I've captured some video from our summer cruise and uploaded it to youtube.com. In the first video, we were heading south from Holland to St. Joseph when a thunderstorm overtook us. The camera doesn't quite capture just how dramatic the sky was. An impressive black band rolled over us bringing wind, rain and lightning. Most of the lightning was cloud-to-cloud, so posed little risk. The wind, which had been blowing around 8 knots out of the south, clocked around 180 degrees and began blowing about 30 kts out of the north, kicking up some wave action in a matter of minutes. The storm was so short-lived, like most thunderstorms, that the waves were moderate. When we saw the front of the storm rolling toward us we quickly doused and gasketed the sails. Within a matter of minutes the storm was on top of us, the sails just barely tied down.
I have more video of the storm that I may digitize at some point. Unfortunately, I didn't get video of the front rolling over us, so all I have is video of the storm approaching and then the backside as it rumbled past.



The second video is of a storm in Frankfort. We were tied up at a marina on Lake Betsie after meeting with some friends from California. We'd intended to cross the lake to Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, that morning but after listening to NOAA's warning of severe thunderstorms with high winds and damaging hail we decided to wait it out in Frankfort and see what materialized. Although NOAA is generally unreliable - at least here on the Great Lakes - they actually nailed this one. The sky began to turn a puke green around noon and moments later the winds picked up and the show was on. Tucked alongside a seawall with her hull sheltered from the wind, Ariel rode out the storm fine. She did heel and howl with the wind in her rig, though, so it was fun ride. We learned later during our return trip that the wind had gusted up to 85mph, knocking out power, taking down trees, and spreading debris about.
In the video you can see a boat at our stern. She's an Island Packet 37 (or so) and belonged to a husband and wife who were cruising with their three kids. They happened to be shopping when the storm hit and got caught in one of the downtown shops. We didn't know they weren't aboard, but we kept a close eye on their boat since the marina had packed us in so tightly. Fortunately, no one collided.