...or the blast that wasn't.

Well, by the time that Andrea reached us she had significantly petered out, expending herself on the US and not having warm enough or simply enough water to rebuild her strength before coming ashore in NS. The result? We had a significant rain even and only about 30 minutes of winds over 30 knots. I’m not complaining. It’s better that we took the precautions rather than not having done so and be hit by a major storm. As it was we were introduced to the club’s hurricane hole where a dozen of the yachts have moorings in behind an island that is pretty much sheltered on all sides. As it is still relatively early in the season there were only two of us in there so we had loads of room. I also found out that some of the yachts have as many as three moorings in the harbour so that when there is a storm they can pick and choose which one they want to hang on. We were fortunate that so many of them were happy to let us use theirs when they weren’t using it.

Saturday was the day that the heavens opened and it simply poured but the skies cleared to a beautiful blue sky on Sunday and we went over and brought her back to the dock whereupon we immediately or as near to immediate as we could wrestled the anchor windlass back into place. We had the normal series or minor catastrophes – dropping essential nuts, screws and bolts into the chain locker, of course into a completely inaccessible area; sweating up a storm in the confines of the forepeak and chain locker. My problem stems from the fact that I have converted what was a simple chain locker with ample room for a single anchor to one that will allow me to house the rode for both our primary and secondary anchors. This makes space a bit of a premium and working area more than cramped. Add to that the small detail that all work has to be done upside down and most of the technology is suspended from the deck above and you can imagine what fun we had. Fortunately Barb has heard all of the language before and was a good sport about hearing it all over again. Suffice to say that the windlass motor has been reinstalled, the hawse pipe repositions and the chain restowed below decks. Whew! While I was doing all of that herself was working on the spring clean up below decks. With the flood that we had below decks a lot of the woodwork had swollen and we had to remove one of the sole hatches to take it home to dry out and refinish.

In spite of all my tales of woe, I think that we will be in a position to take our first weekend away somewhere this weekend. The weather witches are calling for decent weather and we are thinking of heading out to McNutt’s Island on Friday night. The cruising bulletin board that we have been promising the club should be ready this week so we may even be able to convince some of the other boats to join us.