The evening started off very calm. But when the super yachts disappeared, we were wondering what may be up. Did they know something we didnt? PredictWind and Windy both didn’t show anything out of the ordinary.
The winds early evening kept building but we had a good 1600rpm set on the anchor. Checked PredictWind and Windy again and they both didn’t show any storms approaching though a threatening thunderhead could be seen rising over the Faraglioni (the 3 rock formation on the south eastern side of the island). As a precaution we cleared the cockpit of loose items and dogged all the hatches to make sure that they were closed and water tight.
Last at the twilight had gone, and it was almost pitch black when it hit us. It was very unexpected as we were in a good place with good shelter.
Huge thunderstorm with lightning flashes and huge loud cracks of thunder. Horizontal rain screamed at the boat, washing the last week’s salt off in a pressure blast of water. I knew we set the anchor well, so I was not too worried so I decided to enjoy the show … until the wind approached 40 plus knots.
We started sailing at anchor due to windage on sides of the hull. Seas instantly tripled in size. We had a situation here!
No time to put on wet weather gear and with nothing but board shorts and a t-shirt dashed to the wheel and fired up the motor to take pressure off the anchor and keep TUI headed to the wind. The wind was blowing so hard that I thought the courtesy flags on the mast were going to be ripped off. Dinghy on the bow had six points lashing it down but the force of the wind started to lift it off the deck.
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Capri Storm
Soaked and freezing due to wind chill tried to keep the boat steady. The daylight had left us and the remaining boats were all lit up using their cabin lights so other boats could see each other in the limited visibility. Suddenly, an old 60 foot wooden ketch came out of nowhere on my bow, going sideways towards us. They are dragging anchor and had lost control!
It then turned cinematic, like a movie and everything seemed to kind of go into slow motion. We tried to keep control and seeing winds and waves, noise everywhere, with lightning and thunder like a movie I didn’t intend to be in.
The ketch just managed to power forward and cross our bow with a boat length to spare. Finally, out of trouble, NOT!
In a two second period, the screaming wind turned 180 degrees instead started blasting wind and spray in the cockpit and down the hatch. Had to negotiate a 180 turn to face the new win direction and then try and find the washboards and put them in to stop water going inside the boat.
Time to stay focused. Wind started to die down thankfully. Everything was drenched. Shaking with cold, the wind started to ease and then died altogether. The whole thing took about 90 minutes. Nothing broken, and everyone safe. TUI is a strong boat.
While all of this was happening in the darkness of the storm, we saw a monohull with its anchor light still on dragging anchor and drifting out to sea. Hopefully they were OK as we didn’t see them again.
