Sailing Cest La Vie - A Cal 34 Off the GA Coast July 28 2012

While sailing a Cal 34 offshore from St. Simon's Island to Savannah we encountered a series of late afternoon thunderstorms. We were sailing about 5-8 miles out and the thunderstorms were forming over land. We watched the frist storm move away from us but the second and more severe one headed out way. It's never a good sign when the wind is behind you and the thunderstorm is moving directly towards you. We double reefed the main, furled the headsail in about 80% and prepared to ride out the weather. Fortunately, the lightning stayed away and the winds never exceeded 30 mph. The only difficulty was navigating into Ossabaw Sound in the middle of a thunderstorm. Ossabaw has a marked natural channel, but it twists and turns like a corn maze. The buoys are small and difficult to spot even on a clear day, and two markers are 2 miles apart. It would have been very difficult to pull this off without a chartplotter.