Shuffleboard dreams

 Hi all!

That was quite a blow last night! Yes, it was only tropical storm intensity, but when you are in the cockpit at 0 dark 30 being being pulverised by pellets of water and the boat is thrashing desperately to break free of its mooring you tend to ask yourself, "why, am I doing this?" At that moment, I briefly thought that I should take up shuffleboard. Absolutely zero stress. Low expenses. Never played in inclement weather. Least of all at 0300. 

There had been a Tartan 40 sailboat on the mooring immediately to windward of me, a fact that was very unsettling. A beautiful boat, clearly well maintained but with no one aboard. It was yawing back and forth in the wind and just had one mooring line. And there was a second boat to windward of the Tartan that was also swinging wildly, on an anchor no less. So I had these 2 threats above me and no likelihood of the wind changing direction during the night. With no one aboard these boats to monitor chafe they represented a real threat.

The wind picked up during the night and I stayed up monitoring the situation while grabbing little catnaps. Getting up around 3 I saw that the Tartan was still there. About 15 minutes later there was a tremendous blast of wind and rain and I rushed up on deck. Bear in mind that I was napping fully dressed with foul weather gear (wet), safety harness, life jacket, and a large sheath knife. On deck I had 2 anchors ready for immediate deployment in the event of mooring failure. I looked for the Tartan, and it was gone! It had gone by without hitting me!

The blast of wind was considerable and I was really concerned whether I would hold. So I started the engine and put it in gear to take some of the pressure off. I was wearing a diving mask for a while which protected my eyes, but distorted the view because of being wet so I took those off. After a while I realized that none of the other moorings had failed, even while holding larger boats so I shut the engine down and thought more about shuffleboard. And I was very relieved when a tentative dawn appeared. The wind was at a zephyr like 30 to 40 and it was pouring rain, but there was hope.

The Tartan had managed to smash its way into a thicket of pilings that made up the shrimp boat dock. Over the next couple of hours it muscled its way in deeper and to the casual eye appears to be resting comfortably in a safe harbor. And a Hunter sailboat that appears to be of a similar size, that broke loose Tuesday night is lying askew on the top of a rock embankment that surrounds the pulp mill nearby. With the super high tides there will be the need for a crane to remove it.

With gratitude and relief, Charlie

PS I am already rethinking shuffleboard