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05/10/2007: "An interesting week"
We just had an interesting week. Saturday was projects again. Our original plans were to head out for a sail on Saturday and spend the night at anchor. Checking the forecast we canceled those plans. Instead, I managed to finish installing the windlass. As I have mentioned before, our windlass stopped working last year and I was planning on replacing it this year. I got lucky and found an almost exact replacement on eBay. Modifying the mount I was able to install it and get it wired. I will be adding pictures and a description of the project to the Projects page later.
Sunday the wind began to blow. The forecast had called for a large high pressure cell situated north of us with a powerful low pressure cell offshore. This caused a north then a northeast wind and it was forecast to last for several days. When we get an extended northeast wind it develops a wind tide pushing the water in the sound south and back up the rivers and creeks. The winds were forecast to blow 30 – 40 knots with higher gusts until Tuesday afternoon. And blow it did. By late Sunday afternoon the water had risen to just below the dock and the waves were rocking the boats. By now it was hard to get on and off the boat. The water was expected to continue rising as the storm progressed. We opted to bail out and head into town rather then try to stay on board and have problems getting off the boat in the morning. The forecast proved correct, it didn’t stop blowing until Tuesday. The water never did make it over the dock but it came close and the boats were rocked by the waves. One boat broke a dock line but the dock master was on it quickly with no damages. As for us, we relaxed at the Hampton Inn, never having to worry about getting bounced out of bed. Tuesday we moved back aboard as the water was dropping. Wednesday the rain moved in as the low started to move more to the south. At this point it was upgraded to a sub-topical storm and named Andrea, our first named storm and the season hasn’t started yet. A sub-tropical storm is similar to a tropical storm except there are some temperature differences in the eye compared to a tropical.
Our plans for this weekend are to catch a flight to northern Minnesota on Friday and try to be back for work on Monday morning.