Sailing in Hurricane Season: Is It Safe?

Sailing in hurricane season can be done safely, and it comes down to three habits: watch the weather for early warning, always stay within reach of a hurricane hole, and never move on an uncertain forecast. It’s not the reckless gamble the internet makes it out to be.

Google this question, and you’ll mostly hit one answer: don’t. Don’t go, haul out, wait for winter, are you nuts? Perhaps your partner wants to cruise the season, but you think they’ve lost their mind. Or if you’re the one itching to go while everyone ashore calls you reckless, you will find the warnings exhausting and not very useful. I’m not going to tell you what to do. That’s your call.

But I will tell you how we (and numerous friends) actively cruised full-time during hurricane season for 17 years.

Practical Considerations When Cruising in a Hurricane Zone

First, all those naysayers miss three important points:

• The odds are better than you think. For any one boat, a season is mostly all-or-nothing. A storm either finds you or it doesn’t, and most seasons, in most places, it doesn’t.
• You see storms coming a week or two out, not at the last minute. Watching the long-range outlooks gives you that much warning that something might be brewing, and the exact track sharpens as it gets closer. You position early, never scramble.
• Knowledge is power: learning the system here and putting it into play every single day significantly reduces your risk. Once the habits are routine, the season feels manageable instead of frightening.

Dave and I sailed through hurricane season in the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, in Central America, and then through the Florida Keys and the Bahamas. In those 17 years, we were hit directly twice, and the boat came through both times with almost no damage. Our total storm losses came to less than $1,000, and most of that was a dinghy outboard stored ashore in a poor location, not the boat itself.

Start With Insurance

Today, insurance can be a limiting factor. Coverage is harder to get than it was even a decade ago. Your policy may impose either or both of two restrictions on you: navigation limits during hurricane season, and adherence to a prescribed hurricane plan in case of a named storm.

The first step, then, is finding out where your insurance will actually let you cruise during hurricane season. Check your policy for the exact language; don’t rely on memory. From there, you have options: stay within the area you’re covered for, push your carrier to expand it, drop to liability-only, or self-insure.

Next, create a hurricane plan that reflects the fact that you expect to be on the move. Detail (and plan to follow) the system outlined here, and list the potential hurricane holes in the area you’ll be sailing in. We did exactly that, and our plan was accepted every year. Be sure to read what goes into a solid hurricane plan before you submit it to your insurer.

Watching the Weather

Good weather information is critical for safely sailing in hurricane season. It’s what gives you a week or two of lead time instead of a nasty surprise.

• Subscribe to the NHC Tropical Weather Outlook to get the earliest hint that something could be brewing.
• Have a plan for getting detailed forecasts and discussions once a low becomes an Invest (an area the NHC is actively watching), and then a storm.
• Learn to evaluate the forecasts and the uncertainty inherent in them. Knowing how much to trust a given forecast is what keeps you from moving in the wrong direction or at the wrong moment.
• If there is a good forecast service for your cruising grounds (such as Chris Parker’s Marine Weather Center for the US East Coast, Bahamas, and Caribbean), subscribe.
• Plan your connectivity to get the forecasts; it’s best to have one primary method and at least one, preferably two, backup methods. You don’t want to rely on WiFi from a local bar. Spend the money to have sufficient data.

Test your sources before depending on them.

The Actual Sailing in Hurricane Season

The basic rule is always to be within easy reach of a hurricane hole. Now, that doesn’t mean that we were always in a hurricane hole, or even that we stayed in a 50-mile circle of one spot for the whole summer.

Evaluating Hurricane Holes

But “stay within reach of a hurricane hole” begs the question: WHAT is a hurricane hole? How do you identify the possibilities, and how do you choose between them? Some cruising guides will list hurricane or storm holes, but don’t blindly take their word that a location (or marina) offers good protection, that it has sufficient depth for your draft, or that there is good shelter (or evacuation options) for you and your crew. Check it out yourself before you need it.

And if you don’t know how to evaluate locations (and let’s face it, location is the critical factor when it comes to sheltering from a storm), my course Comprehensive Hurricane Prep for Boaters details what to consider. It even includes a checklist for comparing one possibility to another.

Once you know where the hurricane holes are, you can combine that knowledge with the weather outlook to plan your cruising. When the long-range picture is clear, you roam. When something might be developing, you stay within a day of a hole until it passes or fizzles. Either way, always know where the nearest hurricane hole or protected marina is. Scout before you ever need it. (I’ll lump protected marinas in with “hurricane holes” here.)

What to do When a Storm is Expected

If a low gets declared to be an Invest, take three actions:

• Save a route into your chosen hurricane hole on your chartplotter or navigation app from an approach waypoint. It’s much easier to do when there’s no stress!
• Do any errands you’d need to do (such as getting water or renting a car to evacuate) before you’d head into the hurricane hole.
• Re-read your hurricane plan so you remember exactly what you promised the insurance company you’d do.

Further, if the engine is down or doubtful, work your way close enough to the hurricane hole that you could still move the boat into the hole with the dinghy lashed alongside and pushing, or get a tow to the best possible location.

Use times when nothing is even possibly brewing to transit gaps between hurricane holes. This sounds exceptionally cautious: “Why not make a two-day jump if something might develop ten days out? There’s still over a week of buffer!” True, but what if you have engine trouble? What if there are squally days? What if you get there and don’t like the hurricane hole? If you’re near a good hurricane hole right now, don’t risk it.

What We Did – A Real Life Example

We also tried to be smart:

• In a new cruising ground, we didn’t yet know the anchorages, the weather patterns, or the local forecasters, so we gave ourselves extra room. We loosened up only after we knew an area well. Our last year in the Sea of Cortez, after six years there, we were more relaxed than in our first year.
• Our first season with our second boat, we gave ourselves extra time because we hadn’t yet dialed in how to prep her for a hurricane: how the sails came off, where every line attached, what went where. On our previous boat, we could do it in one long day. With a new boat, we wanted two.
• We kept the boat ready to move at any time. A watermaker, a composting head, food aboard, and fuel topped off whenever a can ran low meant we never needed a town run before ducking into a hole.

With no deadlines, we were perfectly happy to wait a few days to see if a system developed. We could always find somewhere interesting to explore . . . while checking the weather reports every six hours!

The Bottom Line

Everyone has to decide what’s right for them, and “not this year” is a perfectly reasonable answer. What I want you to walk away with is that sailing through hurricane season can be a managed, deliberate thing rather than a roll of the dice. That’s very different from the “don’t even think about it” you’ll find everywhere else, and it’s a more honest message.

None of this makes a hurricane safe, because nothing does. But it gives you a real way to decide, season after season, whether to go, and how to handle it well if you do.

About the Author: Carolyn ShearlockCarolyn Shearlock has lived aboard for 17 years and cruised more than 14,000 miles, from Pacific Mexico and Central America to Florida and the Bahamas. In that time, her boats came through two direct hurricane hits — Marty in 2003 and Category 4 Irma in 2017 — plus nine close passes, with less than $1,000 in total damage.

She has spent more than 20 years studying why some boats survive storms while others nearby are lost, and refines her approach after every season. She has taught hurricane prep at Cruisers University and through the American Sailing Association, shared boat-securing tips on The Weather Channel, and her hurricane prep articles have been featured on the cover of Blue Water Sailing and in Cruising World.

Carolyn also created Comprehensive Hurricane Prep for Boaters, a full, self-paced online course with lifetime access including annual updates.