Windy Wednesday on the Water

A Front Approaches

Try to say that five times fast.  Jeff, Stephen, and Shawn were set to go out oystering this morning, and called about 7:00am.  The wind was already blowing about 30mph from the South, and they were interested in a weather forecast.  I checked the radar for them and saw one of the most compact front lines approaching I have ever seen.  The winds were supposed to gust to between 40 and 50 as the front moved through.  I advised them to wait it out, which they did for a while, but in the end, they decided to call it a day.  The wind probably did gust up to around 40, but the front got broken up a bit by the Santee Cooper lakes, and it never was as violent as it looked. 

It’s always good to err on the safe side though; as my Sea School teacher, Capt. Scott, says, “the prudent mariner lives the longest.”  Ask Dee, a friend of ours who crabs out of Awendaw.  He and his crew, John Henry, were out crabbing one afternoon when the weather wasn’t so bad at all.  There was no front line like the one above anywhere around, but an afternoon thunderstorm sprung up.  A waterspout set down out of the storm clouds and lifted his 25 foot boat out of the water, turned it over a few times, and deposited it about 40 feet into the marsh.  Luckily, both captain and his crew were unharmed, although shaken up, literally.  There was a search effort started to find them when they didn’t return that evening.  It turns out that another commercial crabber found him and brought him back to the hill.  He actually still uses the same boat, minus the wheel house that was ripped off.

It just goes to show, if you’re on the water, always keep your weather eye on the horizon.