Oh my! Oh my! What a night!

The second post yesterday was entered at around 21h00 and the wind was still coming in from the SSW at we'll over 40 knots. Barb was looking at Facebook postings and was seeing reports of trees coming down across roads, so, clearly, it was a significant event. From the deck of Nelleke, at approaching high tide, I could see waves breaking over the T-Dock. I imagine the guys that had their cars on the dock overnight will be heading to the local car wash to rinse the salt spray off them this morning.

Last night I was thinking that the boats that were planning to depart today to make the Gulf crossing were out of their minds! But looking at the weather now, and the forecast, perhaps they have the right idea. The only one that I still have concerns about is a 30' sloop from Quebec with a young couple aboard. Their auxiliary is a non-functioning outboard on an engine mount fastened astern and it looks like they are planning to tow a dingy that is a third the size of their yacht. If they can't make the crossing in the weather window I have visions of them losing the dingy, at least. Oh well. They have their dreams and we wish them all the best and loads a luck.

Anyway. Back to the weather. Around midnight, the wind veered to the west and, with the reduced fetch and the Clearwater boats acting as a seawall on the other side of the dock, the seas lay down somewhat but the wind was still there until around 02h00. The gusts would still catch the masts and give Nelleke a bit of a roll since we were then lying with the wind a-beam. By the time we awoke in the morning and after I had rushed out to remove out dock line that would have interfered with the salmon barge departing, it had become colder but the winds and seas had both further abated and we began to think of what we were going to do when the Austrians wanted to move out. The first plan was to simply come back in and take their place, but now it had become feasible to head back over to the Town Dock. Coming alongside of the floating dock will make it a lot easier to remove more stores from on board and take them home. Then, too, it is even closer to the ramp where we will be hauling Nelleke tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, as I thumbed this last sentence the Weather Witches must have been listening, as not an hour later, the winds had picked up again. Not as bad as last night, but enough that we weren't going to be tying up to the floating dock. Oh well. Even the downwind side of the dock was too rough, plus it was very hard to access in the strong crosswinds. Add to that we ran softly aground on one of the old submerged dock cribs since it was dead low tide. At least I now know where it is.

So, with the assistance of some Shelburne friends and again the crew of Grace we came back alongside at SMT.

We seem to be having a recurring problem with the 12V supply on the boat which has led to to even more fully believe that Nelleke was not ready for this trip. I will be working on fixing that among all of the other annoying problems that we discovered on this unanticipated shakedown cruise.