Waking upto the smell of freshly brewed coffee with blue skies outside and cold crisp air while being able to snuggle down into you duvet is the perfect way to start your day. Waking up on a cold concrete floor inside a building which is creaking under the strain of a hurricane that is beating up your floating home just yards from where you are straightening your back after your night of painful slumber is far from ideal.

Wiping what sleep we had from our eye's, we approached the windows at the front of the sailing club and were instantly gratified with our decision to leave poor Ruffian to weather the storm all alone. She was bucking and kicking as each wave crashed over her bow and she slewed violently from left to right like a caged animal trying to finds means of escape as the wind screamed through her rigging. We'd left Larry onboard and we're sure in the spray we could see him shouting 'Come on Arthur. Is that the best you can do?'

We tried the 'out of sight is out of mind' game and the whole sailing club joined us for a slap up breakfast in the local greasy spoon. Finding a greasy spoon that was operational was a mission in itself .With our bellies full of greasy eggs and plastic bread, if we didn't feel sick before through anxiety we certainly did now.

Just to show how 'protected' Shelburne was we nipped south to the exposed Atlantic coastline. The sea was raging, splume flew off the tops of waves and the surface was painted white, standing was a struggle and the rain stung like wasps. Arthur was letting his full fury be known and suddenly Shelburne with it's puny 6 foot waves looked like the well protected harbour it is.

Ruffian was never far from our minds and so leaving the monster surf behind we headed back into town. It was like driving though a war zone. The eye had passed over us and the wind had veered. Trees that had stood for centuries were crashing down around us onto houses and making roads impassable. Power was flickering on and off, and horror of first world horrors, cable TV, telephones and the internet was all out.

As the hours passed the effects of Arthur slowly reduced and at dusk, with everyone else sleeping ashore, we braved the waves to return to our floating home. Inside Ruffian instead of finding devastation we found an oasis of calm.

With Arthur now pouring rain over Newfoundland minds now turned to the clarnup. The town was alive with the noise of chainsaws and the anchorage a hive of activity with everyone undoing everything they'd done to make their boats safe. Ruffian had done well and we'd survived our first hurricane.

Arthurs coming to get us.


Ruffian bucks in the breeze.


And kicks in the waves.


Ow. Ow. Ow. Watching this was not easy.


It was a whole heap windier away from the 'sheltered' bay.


It was too windy for white caps, it was just white.


We're pleased we didn't take shelter here.


Yep. That's about what we got.


Time to repair some damage.


The calm after the storm.


Even the Ensign gets some well deserved TLC.


The town wasted no time in clearing up the shoreside devastation.