After a day of rocking seas and wind from the south, the wind started on its westward turn. As it did so, it began to strengthen. The old churned up seas from the southwest continued as we turned so we rocked in all directions, but especially front to back in the new waves created by the more westerly wind. At some dips our bow would pull our mooring ball underwater.
We watched the wind map with a huge swirling thing off the coast of Hatteras pushing its way east and driving our wind. We watched the radar with a line of showers and thunderstorms working its way toward us. We were worried about the increased winds in those storms as well as electricity. They were due to pass between 1 and 3 am. The wind was supposed to maximize between 1 and 6 and then stay strong in the 20’s until late Tuesday night.
It was impossible to sleep with all of this going on. We could not run Internet through the night but turned it on periodically to check weather and update family. It locked on well each time. I liked the cockpit view. I could see lightning in the distance but never heard it. I could watch our gauges, depth and wind speed. I could check the wind direction with the handheld compass. Low tide was at 1 am but it seemed to be a high low tide. I watched for the tiny beach behind us that is only exposed at low tide and not much of it appeared. David was really worried that our keel or rudder would hit the bottom with our dips. It was soft sand directly below us but we could only imagine rock under that. Our boat made more than the usual number of creaks, and shudders. One new noise was our anchors on the bow knocking against one another. They were both tied down well and could not shift much at all, but just enough to cause an alarming noise. At one point we heard an alarming thud from the rear and were sure we had hit bottom. We didn’t feel anything though and it may have just been things in the lazarette. Our boat ladder was not secure down there and sometimes things in there echo. Once we removed the ladder, we did not hear that thud again. We will check our keel and rudder when it calms just the same.
Later and as rain passed, we sat down below. David read some and I worked on my basket. Weaving was a great way to pass the time and was soothing. I thought of Jer and Carol knitting.
The storms passed with just a little increased wind and rain but no lightning. It looked like the major thunderstorms passed to the north of us and were weakening by the time they reached us. That was a relief for sure.
After the storms passed around 3. It seemed like things would not worsen even though they would not improve for a while. I was able to snooze with one eye open. Around 630, I moved to watch from the cockpit and David was finally able to sleep for a couple of hours. It was a long night but a sunny, much cooler morning as I worked to maximize solar with our west facing position making it possible to capture early morning rays.
The storm continued although winds dropped a little bit and things felt much better in the daylight. Our stern was now pointed toward the beach instead of the rocks and we had a longer distance between us and the shore.
I snoozed while David unwrapped our exhaust pipe and located the leak. It was just bubbling a little bit from an area on the weld where the exhaust meets the engine cooling water. Jeff had a material called jbweld steel putty that he felt we could put over the area . He also had some silicon tape we could put over it. When it calmed enough to brave the wind and waves, we launched Fat Tuesday and went to get it. We decided not to do the repair in a sleep deprived state and instead went to the beach and walked a bit. There were some beautiful overlooks from Rendezvous beach. Back to the boat at sunset.
Early sleep in calming seas.