Mic wrote:
We left Nicaragua on Friday 13th, which probably didn't help matters,
and had a very frustrating sail along the coast of El Salvador and
then Guatemala. Frustrating, as the weather was really changeable. For
example we went from motoring to sailing under reefed genoa alone in
under 2 minutes. But we did have some nice sailing for a couple of
hours each day - then followed by several hours of motoring. So it was
taking longer than we wanted to get to Mexico and we were both getting
tired, but Jetti, as always, was preparing good food. There was a time
constraint as we knew there would be a bad gale coming through the
Gulf of Tehuantepec on Wednesday afternoon, and we had wanted to get
past that area by then. Sadly we didn't quite make it.

The wind got up very quickly from south 7-10 knots to north west 30.
As we got away from land the wind increased more. There are several
proven, accepted, techniques for handling bad weather in a catamaran.
If the wave and wind are not too severe, one can just heave to or take
down all sail and lie ahull.

I am surprised no one has mentioned that trying to cut straight across
the Gulf of Tehuantepec in January (which is when this happened
according to news reports) is wildly reckless. As even some cursory
research will show, the winds in the Gulf of Tehuantepec in January are
pretty much non-stop gales. Even if someone predicted that the winds
in the Gulf would be less than gale force in January, I wouldn't
believe them for a second. The only non-suicidal way to traverse
Tehuatepec in January is stop in Puerto Madero and wait patiently for a
weather window (which may take weeks) and then stay 50 feet off the
beach and creep along the shoreline the whole way around.

The other thing I found bizarre about this story was the fact that the
author seemed to have little understanding of the stucture and dynamics
of the Tehuantepec gales. When a Tehuantepec winter gale starts
blowing it could easily last for 10 days or more, especially in
January, and the zone of gale force winds can extend something like 350
or more miles out to sea. Its not like a low pressure system that
blows through; its a stationary gale that can last weeks. Putting out
a sea anchor in Tehuantepec in a January gale is pretty much
guaranteeing that you will be beat up by gale force winds until you or
your boat falls apart. Also, the Tehuantepec gales shoot out of the
Gulf like a jet from a firehose; if you can work your way to the edge
of the gale zone you can go from 20-30 knot winds to dead calm in the
space of 5 miles.

The real lesson in this story is not about heavy weather tactics, its
about researching conditions before you start a passage, which these
people didn't seem to do.

I crossed Tehuantepec going north around late Nov 2002. I stopped at
Puerto Madero, and then went to the internet cafe every day and
downloaded NWS TPC weatherfax for Tehuantepec. It took 10 days until
they predicted a brief break in the gales (5 knot winds for 2 days).
Then we set out creeping along the shoreline. Just as we were about at
the top of the Gulf the winds were still light and were still predicted
to be less than 10 knots, and we decided that it couldn't be that bad
to cut across the last little bit of the Gulf about 15-30 miles off the
beach. Wrong. We got hit with 30 knot plus winds, double reefed the
main, rolled up the jib to just a scrap, and then flew across the gulf
at 2 knots over hull speed on a beam reach heeled over like crazy.
Since we were relatively near shore the waves weren't too bad, and
since we were near the top of the gulf we only had a short distance of
the wind tunnel to cross, so after about 6-8 hours we were out the
other side and motoring in dead calm, but it was still a hair raising
experience. If we had tried to heave-to, or put out a sea anchor (not
that we had one), we probably would have spent the next couple weeks
drifting slowly downwind in non-stop gale conditions.

Andy