Kaimusailing

It’s not like I haven’t been through a hurricane before, nor Kaimu, nor St Marys, the big problem is going out on the highway to get away from the hurricane. The drivers. When we went to Jacksonville to pick up the mainsail, we encountered the local Jax, FL, drivers, and I commented to Dr. Ken, who was at the wheel, that these drivers were very unpredictable, strange, and dangerous. He agreed. I thought he was slow to react to the aggressive driving, but soon I realized he understood what was going on. He didn’t shrink back into the right lane and keep close to the speed limit. He didn’t charge to the left lane and join the crazy crowd of undisciplined drivers. He observed them in various ways and gave me some insight into mob behavior, as he took whichever lane suited his purpose.
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“It’s like a beehive and they all want to get to the queen or the honey.”, he said.
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Later I could see that that same behavior wasn’t happening up in St. Marys. There were errant drivers, but nothing like down in Jacksonville. I suspect if you go further south in Florida, you will find more and more errant drivers. And these are the drivers that will be driving north, frenzied to escape the big storm, and as a result, you won’t be able to escape the storm when it comes to your neighborhood, the gas stations are empty, and the roads are filled with maniacs.
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The other problem is Florida is noted for not having stringent automotive standards, or stringent automotive insurance standards. So, you are likely to get hit by a maniac driver of a car that can barely drive, and his insurance may or may not be effective. .On the other hand, you could just stay put and deal with a category 4 hurricane.
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Today I learned that there is no category 6 for hurricanes. The team that originated the hurricane categories were mostly concerned about hurricane strength vs building codes. In other words, the hurricane categories are designated as to the damage they will do to infrastructure. At category 5, just about everything will be destroyed. There is no reason to designate a higher category, unless structures can be built to survive category 5. So, Irma is a category 5, the ultimate destroyer of infrastructure.
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One of the things I had to do was paddle the kayak out to Trillium, the C&C 24, and make sure she was prepared for the storm. It was just past high tide, so I had to work against an ebb current that was building. I had to clean up a pile of stuff that had been sitting in the cockpit. The problem was that debris could block the cockpit drains, then the water would rise and spill over into the cabin. I began bagging some items that I should have thrown away a long time ago. I ended up with a full bag of garbage. Other items that would be of use someday were stowed down below.
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The mud wasps were using the cabin for their nests and I was in a battle with them. I have an inordinate fear of wasps and could do no work until I had chased them away or swatted them or, in one case, sprayed with ether starting fluid, thus ethernizing the wasp.
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When I had just a jumble of ropes on the floor of the cockpit I noticed one darker rope, copper colored. It was a snake and my heart jumped, and I jumped back, away from it. Was it a copper head? I was able to threaten it with the boat hook, then somehow lifted it and tossed it over the transom. Bye, bye snake. Not so fast, the snake was swimming against the ebb current with its head high out of the water. It slithered along in the water and was almost to the outboard motor, which was raised, but still close enough to the water for the snake to writhe onto it. I struck at it with the boathook and it fell back in the current, then began swimming again. It looked angry.
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The current was growing stronger and the snake was getting tired, but for a long time I kept my eye on it as it swam toward the boat. Gradually it began to lose ground and after a while it was way out of sight.
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I scrubbed the cockpit and poured buckets of water all over, cleaning any debris that found its way to the scuppers. After I was confident that only some storm borne debris could sink the boat, I packed up my bag of trash, jumped into the kayak, and returned to the boatyard.
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Richard of Time and Tide emailed and requested if we had opportunity to square away his boat and little catamaran dinghy. Jock of Sophie was also emailed, so the two of us got Richard’s boat stormified. Jock said he was starving and took me to a restaurant in St. Marys for pasta and hurricane planning.
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The next day was spent getting anything I didn’t want inundated out of the work spaces and up into Kaimu, mostly into the pilothouse. The outrigger canoe was stowed on a couple large metal sawhorses and tied down so that it wouldn’t blow away.
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The hurricane forecast looks like it is updated about every 6 hours. The latest update shows the storm running inland along the west coast of Florida. Also its speed had decreased, changing its scheduled arrival. I deciphered a NOAA bulletin that was promising, it placed the dying storm between us and Tallahassee with 60 mph winds. And the winds would be even less away from the storm center. However, the forecast has changed so many times, we have to wait until it turns away from Cuba, that will set the stage for what happens in Florida.