Sprite Survived!

Yes, Sprite 2 weathered the storm like a champ and was still afloat at 7am this morning when I went down to Eastney to check on her. Obviously I couldn't go out in a dinghy to have a close look at her due to the storm force winds that were still blowing, but the only issue I could see using binoculars was the mooring chain had jumped out of the bow roller.

After work this evening I rowed out to her and reset the chain. Because it was dark an still blowing quite hard making moving the dinghy difficult, I just felt the bow area and there doesn't appear to be any damage.

Jim had lent me his oars which made rowing the dinghy a lot easier even with the wind, but bravely decided to stay on shore. I checked out his mooring and found one of his 2 ropes severed and the second rope had chafed through the outer braid and was down to the core. So I lassoed a second rope round his mooring buoy as a stopgap measure. It wasn't the easiest of tasks holding the dinghy in position and trying to lift a very heavy mooring buoy and chain whilst its blowing a hooley. Hopefully that'll stop his boat ending up on the beach again. But it will need sorting out properly in the next few days.

A few boats didn't fare so well, ending up on the beach after breaking their moorings or bumping into one another. Luckily the beach has a shallow slope with a muddy base, so its very boat-friendly as long as you don't clout another boat on the way to being beached.

This Snapdragon ended up spun around on one of its beaching legs:

I do hope his rudder and prop shaft are ok after being beached so hard:

These boats ended up bumped up together on the beach with a bit of chafing. The orange-hulled boat also has a shredded mainsail blowing in the wind:

One wooden boat originally near mine had broken its moorings but luckily ended up on the mud at the bottom of the beach away from any other boats.

All in all most people got off lightly. Once again I proved that its better to have a chain mooring than a rope one. At the weekend I'll have a closer look at Sprite 2 in the daylight to make sure there isn't anything amiss before the next storm blows in.