The wind changes
08 October 2013 | Manteo, N.C.
We had a gentle 5-knot wind from the southwest when we anchored Sunday but it soon shifted to the south and increased to 10 to 15 knots. The waves were a foot or so. It was breezy, the boat had a nice rocking motion and we didn’t have any problems going ashore to the town’s dinghy dock. But the National Weather Service warned that a high pressure system to the north and west and a low pressure system moving up the east coast would cause high winds and rain later in the week.
On Monday, we walked about Manteo’s waterfront, visited the George Washington Creef Boathouse and the Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse and ambled along the boardwalk in Roanoke Island Festival Park on a gorgeous sunny day.
Robert left Madison and me in the park and went to pick up some ice and take it back to the boat. The park has its own dinghy dock along the boardwalk and that’s where he picked us up. We wandered through the marsh for a while before heading back to Arwen. We had dinner and went to bed, hoping the anticipated wind shift didn’t cause problems during the night.
We hoped in vain. About 2 a.m. Tuesday morning the wind moved to the north. The boat had been rocking when we went to bed but soon after the wind shift it began some serious bouncing. Robert got up to make sure the anchor held. The wind continued to increase until by 4:30 a.m. there were gusts of over 25 knots. The anchor never moved, but the high winds kept Robert awake most of the rest of the night worrying that it might and the hobby-horsing kept me from getting much sleep either.
Our other concern centered on the need to take Madison in for her walk in the morning. Assuming our dinghy motor was powerful enough to get us back to the boat going against the waves and an 18-25 knot wind, it was sure to be a miserable ride and hard on our geriatric dog.
If the weather forecast holds, conditions aren’t expected to improve before Thursday, so we began considering our options and decided the better part of valor would be to move to the Manteo Waterfront Marina. We were a little concerned that the winds had set the anchor so that we would have trouble getting it up, but it came up easily and we were soon tied to the dock.
The rain that began during the night had chilled us to the bone, but as Cathy from Makani said earlier this week, there isn’t much that can happen on a boat that a good hot shower won’t fix. After our showers we left Madison on the boat and walked across to Roanoke Island Festival Park to tour the park’s replicas of a 1587 merchant ship, a coastal American Indian Town and an English settlement and to see a 45-minute film, “The Legend of Two-Path,” about the arrival of the English on Roanoke Island. More about that later.
We had a fine dinner at Ortega’z Southwestern Grill and are looking forward to turning in early and having a calmer night.