This week SetSail asked our cruising contributors about what they do for hurricane preparations: What if you’re not in a place like Guam with its special hurricane hole? What sort of ground tackle, chafe gear, etc. do you carry aboard? What sort of locations do you look for to ride out the storm? Here is Steve and Linda’s response.

While we’ve always thought it would be interesting to experience (in safety) a hurricane, we’ve done everything possible to avoid such an occurrence. We’ve made our cruising plans to be well away from hurricane-prone areas during the normal seasons. Of course there is a trade-off in ocean passages between the end of tropical storm season and the onset of equinoctial gales. And our preference has always been to shade the risks more towards tropicals and away from higher latitude storms-the latter being much larger and potentially more dangerous.

Over the years we’ve watched a number of tropical storms form and head towards the area in which we were cruising. We’ve been fortunate. With two exceptions, we’ve not even had a close call. Still, we’ve formed a few strong convictions about preparation.

First, the biggest risks come from other boats. So early on, when the weather is not a concern to most of our neighbors, we want to find a secure spot, hopefully one where we are protected from other vessels. We like to scout the area we’re cruising for good hurricane holes. These might be a day’s sail away, but we’ve always got a spot in the back of our mind that we can head towards should the need arise.

Next, although it is a pain, we like to get the boat prepared early. This means stripping roller-furled sails and awnings, and in general doing everything possible to reduce windage. In the old days we’d remove out mainsail. This is no longer practical as the sails are too big, so we wrap the sail cover and sails with long spirals of line to keep them under control. Halyards are pulled as well. We give the engine and drive line a good look, the same as if we were heading out on a long passage-it may be needed to move the boat out of the way of another vessel.

Our main anchor is hurricane size-which means in every day usage it is way too big (but we sleep really well at night!)-so we don’t have a lot to do in this regard. Extra anchors are shackled to their rodes, ready to deploy should the need arise.

We normally carry an unallocated 1000′ (300m) of rode, to be used for tying up in rivers, or running long lines ashore to items which are more secure than the average dock. We generally have this broken down into 3 long rodes, each on its own reel. This makes for convenient storage, but in an emergency it is sometimes hard to get the line cleanly off the reel. Any line left over after anchoring/tying up is flaked out so it is ready to run (on the new boat we’re using spinnaker "turtles" for this process).

And then we wait, watch the weather, and play "what if" games. We’ll write up several different potential weather scenarios, where the wind will shift if this or that happens, how the boat will swing, and what our action should be. And we take compass bearings on landmarks, just in case the electronics quit working.