Wind

The noises that you hear when you live on a boat soon become a back ground rhythm in your life. Everything from the slapping of the waves against the hull or the slow creak of the anchor rope as it stretches with each gust of the wind. The sound of dinghies motoring by or the occasional call of “Snow Goose… anyone home"? These are typical background sounds of life. There's one sound that's harder to get use to, it’s the sound of the wind when it’s blowing hard and for the last 2 days the wind has been doing just that. It’s been about 15 to 20 MPH with higher gusts. The wind sways the boat back and forth and tugs at the dinghy on the rear cleat. It sounds alive as it moans in the rigging with its “whoooo’s” and sighs. In stronger gusts the wind begins to roar like an angry beast or a train passing in the night. You awake in the night and are taunted buy the wind you as you try to get back to sleep. It rattles the wire on the spinnaker pole or bangs the mast with a loose halyard. At times it shakes the rigging with its strength. This is why, when I’m lying there awake and the wind is roaring in the rigging I recall the best lesson that the wind has taught me…that a secure mooring or a well dug in second anchor is the best remedy for wind blown insomnia on a boat.