Day 305, Year 6: Best Friends
Date: Thursday, August 25, 2011
Weather: Partly Sunny and Very Windy, S 30 knots
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
For eight years now we have lived aboard Windbird. She has taken us around the world on a fantastic adventure and returned us safely. I can always rely on her, no matter what kind of weather. I truly feel like she is my best friend and I really don’t want to abandon her if Hurricane Irene should hit here. But everyone says we will need to leave her and stay on land, so that is probably what we will do . . . only very, very reluctantly.
The very first thing we did this morning was talk with Woods Hole Marine about our mooring. They assure us that we have a secure mooring with both a mushroom and a thousand pound dead weight block. Mark talked with the bridge tender and a local policewoman and they both said that people are trying to get their boats into Eel Pond, not out of it. We also talked to a man on the boat closest to us. He’s been in here for a few years and thinks we will all be fine as long as we reduce windage by getting all canvas and sails down. He did tell us about a hurricane wall in New Bedford, across Buzzard’s Bay, but the whole New England fishing fleet is headed there and there probably wouldn’t be room for us. So we tentative decided that we will stay here and ride out the storm. We then spent most of our morning with my niece Lynn and her friend Sandy who spent the night aboard. They took us out for a fantastic breakfast at Fish Monger’s here in Woods Hole and then we walked down to the beach by way of the aquarium, catching the 11 am seal show. It was then time to head into Falmouth to pick up the boys from summer camp. Mark went in with me, and after naps, we had worked on securing the shed kit that was delivered yesterday. When we returned to Windbird, Bob Morris came over to talk about hurricane preparation. He has been in Maine sailing with a friend, but returned to get his boat ready for the storm. He has had a boat in Eel Pond for forty years, and he had some great suggestions. He has four thousand pounds of dead weight holding his Pacific Seacraft in place, but he thinks we should be fine with the mooring we have if we also put out an anchor and let all of our chain sit on the bottom. He’s waiting until Saturday to get an update on the hurricane’s track before taking off his mainsail, and we might do the same. It is just such a hard job and if we are only going to get tropical storm winds we don’t need to do it. Rather than wind, it looks like the biggest problem we will face here in Eel Pond is a storm surge. It looks like we might get a five to ten foot surge due to the timing of the hit with a new moon high tide. We were going to do all of our getting ready for the storm in the morning as it was too windy today to take down sails and tomorrow is forecast to have very low winds, BUT late this afternoon Mark got a request from West Marine to work all day tomorrow and Saturday. Everybody is buying boat supplies to prepare for the storm, so we will get up at the crack of dawn and do what work we can before Mark heads into work. Then we will try to finish up tomorrow evening.
I guess we were just lucky the two years that we lived aboard in Boston. We had no hurricane threats. This is the first time since the 1990’s that we have had to deal with this. And this is just the first threat of the season. What a nerve wracking business!
On a completely different subject, we sold our old galley stove today for $200. We listed it on Craig’s List yesterday and got a reply almost immediately. This now reduces the cost of our new stove to just $200. What a great deal.
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| 110825 Day 305 Cape Cod, USA–Lynn and Sandy Visit |
