North Atlantic Gales (@MVDirona Channel)

On our 2,800nm North Atlantic passage from Newport, RI to Ireland (http://mvdirona.com/2017/05/newport-t...) we passed through three gales. The first two were in the initial week of the passage, before we turned the corner south of the Grand Banks. It was during the first gale that we battled a water ingress issue that set off alarms a 1:15am (http://mvdirona.com/2017/05/alarms-at.... We passed through the third system about three days before making landfall in Kinsale, Ireland. This one was the most intense of the three, but thankfully the fastest moving, and we passed through the worst in only a few hours. The video below shows what the conditions were like on board Dirona during the daylight portions of two of the storms. In the first, the winds were fairly heavy, running 25-30 knots with gusts to 47 knots. In the second, the winds were surprisingly light, and yet the waves were even bigger.