TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums British Virgin Islands Swell NOW and for the Week

The weather forming up and running up the East Coast is and will produce massive swell well to the BVI and well south. Many islands and shores will see the highest swells and wave heights in history. Check you favorite tools. I will leave the cutting and pasting to others. Protected harbors only.

Thx for the heads up....wind direction certainly had some variety next week. I had not paid too much attention to the swells until I read your post. We get down there Saturday for a week. A night in Anegada appears to be out.

He's back....

Anegada should be fine with a N swell. I have been there with a moderate swell and it was not a issue.
G

I have been watching it all week routing Catatonic's trip down from Provo. The Nor'easter beating up the northeast is setting up a big swell system. Looks to hit the islands late Saturday with peak late Sunday night into Monday. Up to 30' on the reef north shore of Anegada. Direction is due north to a bit west so the north shore of Tortola will be extremely dangerous. Considerably less in the channel but still not advisable to be out in it.

Things should get back closer to normal by late Tuesday.

Note the west wind in the forecast. Note the clearly forecasted sudden switch in swell.

We were once in Salt Whistle Bay, Mayreau when suddenly in the middle of the day swell showed up. Most of the boats in the first row ended up on the beach in a near instant.

An after dark switch like that in Cane Garden or White Bay would be catastrophic.

Everyone should visit once, or twice......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeFcgYujUYk

The swell came in. Not sure if it was before or after but the Baths area was closed to anchoring and mooring. There was a death reported there today after a man went missing. Tragic.

A quick view of the Soggy Dollar webcam show several boats moored in White Bay tonight (Sat). I hope for their sake, the really big swells don't arrive overnight and ruin a vacation...

The worst is forecast for Sunday night, Monday, and Monday night. North facing beaches will see big impact!

https://forecast.weather.gov/shmrn.php?mz=amz715

Soggy has one small boat, water almost to the palms.

Swells now breaking on the reef and even bigger ones breaking on the beach.

Swimming area buoy has broken free...

A few brave go-fast-boats came through and dropped their passengers off a long way out to swim in! The one that anchored looked pretty dicey...skipper must have had an iron stomach to have stayed aboard for 3 hours before collecting his cargo and getting out of dodge!

Do palm trees like salt water?!

What a crazy season it has been so far. Our charter Feb 19-26 saw 5 days of 30+ kt winds, 10 to 12 foot breaking seas, and frequent heavy rain. But our swell was never over 8 feet. But now they're calling for swell 13 to 14 feet with north-westerly winds. Everyone be careful.

We started out from St Thomas on our Saba 50 on the 21st and had ENE 20-28 kts with gusts to 31 kts as we motored to Maho Bay on day 1 and Prickly Pear Island, North Sound on day 2, followed by two lovely days of ENE 16-20 winds for the sail to Anegada on day 4 and back to VG on day 5, then a pleasant ENE 13-15 kt downwind run to the Rhone and The Indians on day 6. Day 7 was a calm NE 4-6 kts as we motored to Ensenada Honda, Culebra. Winds stayed light on Day 8 as we visited Culebrita and Bahia de Almodovar. Day 9 was NE 8 kts for a motorsail to Bahia de la Chiva, Vieques. Seeing the longterm forecast, we decided to head back to St John on day 10 (Friday) and motorsailed in ENE 5-10 kts to Salt Pond Bay which also gave us an excellent view of the Full Moon rising. Been there since as we wait for this weather to pass. I saw perhaps one boat at Lameshur and Salt Pond Bay last Sunday - now the 5 mooring balls in Salt Pond have been full since Saturday with several boats passing by looking for a mooring. AIS shows several boats at Lameshur.

Winds went South yesterday and we had some chop in the bay. With the southerly wind shift the water temperature in Salt Pond Bay peaked at 84.4°F, about 2°F higher than on Friday or today when the winds started veering from the West.

Feeling a bit stir-crazy tied to the same mooring for 2-1/2 days with another day to go, but glad we were at least able to cover 275 nm in the first 10 days and catch & release 11 fish (6 pain-in-the-butt lure chewing barricuda, 2 cero mackeral, 3 bonito). This has also given us time to tend to some boat projects.

Heard on the VHF that a mooring ball at Lameshur broke loose with a boat attached yesterday. No details other than a bad shackle on the mooring. The boat is apparently safe.

If you check buoy 41043 The wave height there is approaching 20'

The latest forecast for today (Monday) for waves on north facing shores in the Virgin Islands has been adjusted HIGHER:

Seas 18 to 20 feet with
occasional seas up to 24 feet. Dominant Period 15 seconds. North
swell 9 to 14 feet.

https://magicseaweed.com/North-Atla...&start=2018-03-02&end=2018-03-13

Hit play... quite the swell!

At least one boat will moor at the baths and try and dingy in! Keep in mind soggy is basically a south facing anchorage and somewhat protected. Would love to see CDB right now.
G

Winter storm Quinn May send another round of swells down late this week. Shaping up to possibly be a another Noreaster.

I posted a few CBG video on my FB account if you want to see

SW Bay, truly paradise.......

Had beautiful clear skies as we flew out of STT today and it was amazing to see how the swell had churned up the waters surrounding St Thomas. The water was a light green color from the tons of suspended sand and looked like we were flying over the shallow waters of the Bahamas. It extended many miles from St Thomas and there was a very clear demarcation with the 'clean' blue ocean water. We clearly saw this effect as we motored along the south shore of St John this morning with the water instantly going from light green to deep blue as we crossed Pillsbury Sound.