Thursday October 17, 2019
A wet afternoon and night. The wind died down about supper time but then picked up again with a vengance and backed around to the east. By midnight although the rain had died down the wind had increased it had come round even more to the north to 20 kts. I hate these stormy nights at anchor or on a mooring. I know that this is a reputable place an Matt directed us to this mooring and I do have a lot of faith in his judgement but still.... this is a strange mooring that I don’t know personally so I was up several times on deck through the evening and night checking things out. The wind got so strong that the wind generator’s brake kept shutting it down. I am consulting so many different websites for the weather and they all use different units of measurement - Canadian using kph , marine using kts, and the US sites using mph that I am getting pretty good at converting them to each other.

Every time I start to grip to myself about how much we are being clobbered by the weather I just remind myself that our friends back home in Shelburne will be getting it worse. Plus there is a flood warning out for here. We don’t have to worry about a flood. We are already floating but I’m sure that there are a lot of spots in the communities around here that are low lying and you see all those news clips on TV of cars half submerged and people on the roofs of their houses waiting for the motor boats that are coming up the streets to take them off. I hope that doesn’t happen here.

As it was, when we awoke and were able to see around the mooring field we saw that there were a couple of boats whose sails had come undone during the blow and one at least was damaged irreparably. I put picture of both out on the gallery. The boat with the loose jib has lost it I’m afraid and from the appearance of the luff on it he may also have lost his inner headstay. His outer headstay still seems intact to he shouldn’t loose his mast unless the loss of the inner is an indication of some sort of structural failure on his foredeck. The other you might not be able to see as well but his main is loose and flopping about over the boom and deck. I can’t tell from here if it has suffered any damage to the sail or to anything else. Big lesson to make sure you stow all sails properly plus the advantage of actually being on the boat to be able to deal with damage when it occurs.

It looks like we will be aboard for most of the day but before lunch and with Matt’s skillful assistance we went to shore and I got our refilled propane tank. The wind had picked up while we were ashore and we got rather wet on the way back to Nelleke, but both tanks are in place and we are ready to set off through NYC tomorrow morning. Today even the water taxi stops at a different and more sheltered dock when on a call.

We had received a message from a boat and crew that we knew from Armdale Yacht Club who said that they were hanging out in New Bern NC until the hurricane season passes. Substitute winter storm for hurricane and it looks like we are doing sort of the same thing except that they are further south and are nice and warm, I hope. Plus we keep moving when we can.

Our experiment with the natural filling of the water tank worked a treat. It was filled to overflowing in a jiffy last night. Why haven’t we done this before? It eliminates the requirement to run the water maker or to go into a marina to buy a dribble of fuel so we can fill up with water. It makes sense.

I am looking forward to getting the solar panels fixed. In the daylight hours they are a lot more efficient in charging the batteries than Wendy. Also, first thing this morning we got a note from the Power Corporation with a HUGE power bill. Apparently for some reason they decided to stop the automatic billing and now we owe them buckazoids! We do have resources to pay but it is coming from our ever dwindling cruising account.

Sigh!

On a different note, have a look at the yacht in the photo on this post. What seems off with it? Most sailboats are taller than they are long and this one doesn’t appear to be so. We mentioned it to Matt and he tells us that it is a higher tech yacht and the mast is short like that to clear the bridges that are 70’ but that when she is under sail the mast can be hydraulically raised to what you would expect or an additional 60%. It was designed by the son of the owner who is an MIT grad and this was one of his projects. It cost $28million but is currently for sale at a rock bottom price. It can be yours for a mere $19million. The line forms on the right.......

We are trying to decide what we want to do tomorrow. It appears that there is another tropical storm coming in from the Gulf of Mexico and I really don’t want to be sitting through another session like that we did at Newport or even here. The forecast for Friday has it starting at 20kts on the beam but off the land and decreasing over the following 24 hours. If the forecast remains the same when we check tomorrow AM I think that we will try to clear the East River and head for the mouth of the Delaware. After that, since we aren’t in a rush any more if the weather doesn’t suggest otherwise we could go up the Delaware to the canal and cross over to the Chesapeake. Although I was hoping to avoid it like so many other aspects of our cruise so far, it is still quite enjoyable. Very scenic up and even more so back down the Chesapeake.

Barb is making a donut shaped calzone in her stove top oven for diner tonight. I won’t steal her thunder other than to introduce the subject to you. I’ll let her tell you in one of her posts.

Anyway, in the interests of getting this post out there I will set it up now. We are at the peak (supposedly) of this windstorm and it will die down overnight. At least I hope so. Fingers crossed. I will let you know in tomorrow’s post how that turned out.