Boat days, BBQ, storms, and a Starlink launch
March 21 found us still in Rock Sound, waiting for some storms to come through, and then spending some days on the boat actually weathering those storms.
We did manage to take advantage of being in Rock Sound on a Friday to check out Hall’s Grocery & Deli’s famous Friday lunch specials. The plates were all amazing deals, and delicious. Cecelia gave the ribs a big thumbs up. The carrot cake was a winner, too.
The high winds and storms rolled in around 6 am on the 23rd, so we were out of bed a little earlier than usual to check it out. We saw 45 knots on the wind instruments while we were surveying our surroundings. The photos really don’t do it justice, but it was pretty crazy in the harbor. Boats were swinging around a lot, waves were pretty bouncy, and rain storms were passing through frequently.
You can see a boat behind us who had for some reason left their code zero up (it’s on a removable top-down furler and definitely not something you want up in high winds). The sail unfurled itself. It took a while for the guy onboard to wrestle it down, and by then his staysail (the sail just behind the code zero) was also coming unwrapped. No bueno!
Aside from that poor guy’s drama, everything else was mostly okay for the majority of the day. There was an announcement that one boat lost a cockatiel named Ray just before the morning squalls, and feared he was gone for good.* We stayed on the boat, watching tv shows (thank you Starlink!) and lazing around, opening and closing hatches as the rain passed through.
At 5 pm, another big squall came through, and our anchor reset itself as we quickly whipped about 90 degrees from our prior direction. Then somehow our dinghy got its painter line stuck up under the boat, so in a calm(er) moment we had to go out in the rain and wind and feed the line through to get it unstuck. No one wants a line under the boat like that, especially in a storm, when we might have to start the engine to deal with a dragging anchor, or to avoid some other boat nearby dragging its anchor. Some boats on the radio said they saw 55 knots during this squall; we only saw 42. Those high winds were over within the hour, though, and then we were back to intermittent rain and not-as-crazy winds.
More squalls came through overnight, and we heard reports the next day from friends in George Town (about 70 miles from us) who had boats next to them that were struck by lightning. Seven boats in all, according to the radio traffic. Yikes. We sure hope they were all able to get the damage repaired.
The 24th was a much prettier day, as is often the case after a storm; sunny and breezy. The boat was also nice and clean after all that rain; getting the salt off of everything is lovely! We also spotted some turtles in the anchorage near us, and watched some seabirds flying around later in the day.
The 25th was another rainy morning, so we held school and then spent some time going through toys and books and stuff in Cecelia’s room. She was pretty happy to have it all tidied up again (and so were her parents). That night we saw another Starlink launch from Cape Canaveral, which went right over our boat. Pretty cool!
*Amazingly, there is a happy ending to this one: Ray was found more than a week later, 17 miles away (!!!) in Weymyss Bight, and was reunited with his owners. Hooray!
I’m so glad that Ray was reunited! That must have been scary for the owners…
I’m sure it was! I’m glad the story had a happy ending, too.