We had given all of our cushions to the guy making new ones for us (so they can make sure seams are correct and everything fits perfectly), and sleeping on a boat with no cushions is not comfortable, so we headed back to the apartment for a couple weeks.
The day after we left, a storm blew through - we had been expecting some gusts of gale force winds, and THOUGHT we had tied everything down securely and stowed everything inside... Unfortunately, the winds actually got to hurricane level for about 15-20 minutes, and we had not taken down the jib. We had also forgotten to secure the jib sheets, but the furling line was secure. We realized later it had also been wrapped poorly the last time it was furled (right before we bought the boat).
So, I'm sitting in the apartment, enjoying my climate control, and I get a call from the marina manager letting me know that my jib is flapping around like crazy and they are trying to get it under control. I let him know we were about four hours away and he said they would do their best to secure it for us. Shortly thereafter, I got a call from one of my neighbors in the marina letting me know the same thing - he sent me a short video of it, and let me know they had six guys working on it. They did get it tied off and secured well enough for the night, and Bean and I planned to go up the next day and see what we could fix.
We left that night and got a hotel room so we would have plenty of daylight to work on the boat. When we arrived at the harbor the next morning, we realized we hadn't locked down everything - the galley was a mess ;-) We quickly picked everything up and properly stowed it, and gave the boat a once-over for damage report. Nothing too critical other than the jib; I fixed a pole that had come loose for the bimini, we dropped a couple more fenders in areas that had rubbed against the dock, and we re-tightened our dock lines. Then we tried to look at the jib - we got the basics knots and ties undone, and started trying to unfurl the sail, but it was stuck hard, and we were now fighting the wind that had just kicked up - about 12kts with gusts around 18. So, we decided now was not the time to try this project, and we would be back once we had comfortable cushions to sleep on. We retied everything as tight as we could so it would not flap and cause any further damage, and headed home.
Lessons learned - do not leave the boat unattended with a storm of any size approaching without removing the jib - and make sure you stow everything properly!
That's all for today, hope you enjoyed, and I'll update you when we get back
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