It’s an eery thing to watch a boat die by moonlight.
Any time, if you are not accustomed to such things, it is jarring to see any vessel in extremis… the carefully designed lines canted at odd angles, water invading places where no water should be. But by the light of a full moon, further amplified by a frozen dusting of snow glistening from every available surface, it’s particularly surreal.
The winds in Port Townsend, which were forecast to dissipate by the early morning hours, continued to howl down out of the north unabated, raising four to five foot rollers which were marching south in gleaming ranks by 0500, pounding a loose catamaran against the breakwater at Hadlock Marina and dismasting her sometime in the night. Another vessel, a sailboat with her mast removed, had been attended by Vessel Assist only the day before with her decks awash. Pumped dry, she was riding high at sunset last night. This morning, there is no sign of her, just the infrequent gleam in the midst of the breakers that hints of the mooring ball she was resting on.
The weather station in Port Townsend is reporting winds only in the 15-25 knot range, but it’s probably ten knots greater than that here at the exposed south end of the bay.
At dawn, fuller measure of the damage could be taken. The bow section of the starboard hull of the cat had torn off. The mast, which had been rolling around on the cabin top last night, was nowhere to be seen. A smaller runabout which hadn’t been visible in the moonlight had joined her there pinned against the breakwater, itself smashing alternately into the cat and the concrete. Further along, a sloop had its rolled up jib come unfurled and it whipped itself into ribbons in the early morning light. From our angle, it was impossible to tell if it was in the marina or another victim forced up onto the breakwater… either way, the exaggerated roll was sure to be pounding it against whatever it rested next to. In past the marina, a mooring ball appeared in the bay that had not been there before, some random bit of debris still tied to it that I can only hope does not represent the remains of a boat.
In the marina, life didn’t look much better. A schooner near the outboard end had doubled and trebled her lines and stood watch on them most of the night. Nearby, a section of dock had partially torn away and was beginning to roll under water. Someone’s dinghy had torn loose from the davits and was dangling into the waves. The carnage made the single dock box that was swept off and onto shore last week look trivial.
There was one good point to the wind, at least; snow that might otherwise have built up and frozen on masts and rigging was blasted clear well before it could have become a problem.
Under a clear sky, the schooner crew decided they had had enough of being at the bottom of the washing machine and pulled out for a brisk, chilly trip north. As I write this, it’s still too rough for anyone to try to pull off the cat or stabilize the dock. Which brings out another uncomfortable realization of nautical life: sometimes all you can do is watch.
Edit: For some reason, my YouTube embed isn’t sticking here; you can watch a short video of the schooner pulling out here.