The general consensus among those living at this marina is that "this is nothing." One neighbor just told me of a time when she had to crawl down the dock to get to and from her houseboat. It hasn't been even close to that bad, just rainy and windy. Right now its just cloudy and not raining or windy at all - but it comes in bands. And it looks like I'm staying until Monday at least and possibly until Tuesday. There's one more project that I want to get done here (replacing the old chart plotter with the new Lawrance color one I salvaged from the Catalina 25 - my other sailboat, for sale at the sailboat shop in Phoenix). Practically, it just doesn't make sense to rush south tomorrow or Sunday in light of what you see above. It means I will have been in Hilton Head for close to two weeks by the time I depart, but holding for a bit this far north is probably a wise idea this time of year as the nice gentleman wrote in the comment below. I really should hold here until October, but I don't have that many boat projects and I think I would start to get bored. It has been an interesting experience with all this time on my hands. Somehow the days slip by even though I'm not doing much of anything productive. I read in another blog that the most dangerous piece of equipment on a sailboat is a calendar. Fortunately, I have time to waste, I've got nowhere to be and nothing much else to do. Last night I was invited to dinner at the boat of the kind German/Canadian couple I've been dog walking with. It was so nice and civilized. I discovered that salad on a sailboat is a very special treat. And ice cream - they served ice cream for dessert after a great fish, sauce, and rice dinner. My freezer could take some fudge bars if I sacrificed an ice tray or two, but I'll need to get a separate freezer unit if I want to freeze foods in bulk. The only other relatively interesting thing I have to report is that in the heart of this tropical storm, my three water tanks comprising over 80 gallons of water went dry, so I stood out there in the drizzling rain with a hose filling up the tanks. It's been two weeks since I filled those tanks at the gas docks in Charleston. Without conserving water I went that long between refill. If I seriously conserved water, I could go a month - especially if I add four 5 gallon reserve jugs (which can be brought by dingy to the shore for filling - more about that later). I would say 75% of the water went towards washing dishes so if I used paper or stopped being so liberal with my water use when washing dishes I could go a whole lot longer on the water I have. Probably 20% is used for drinking for myself and the dogs, and another 5% for showers. I haven't used any diesel in well over a week, so I've got that going for me. On a completely different note, my high school 20th year reunion is taking place this week. I've been getting back in touch with a lot of old high school friends through Facebook. It's nice. I'm very glad I'm here and not at the reunion in Tucson, but there is a scintilla of nastalga...