Day 82 - Wheee!
Well at least the weather forecasts have been correct? Wow is it blowing! When planning out this wind storm I had originally planned on us moving Friday to a better anchorage for the direction of wind. However, with Evelyn here visiting we opted to stay put in Egg Harbor. This anchorage is 98% protected and the wind for today (and Sunday and Monday) is coming in from that 2% North, northwest direction. We are now walking around the boat looking like Captain Jack Sparrow, and even those of us without the beard to match are having a hard time walking straight on land!
Let’s back up.
I awoke at a decent time this morning. Poor Kona doesn’t want to eat her food because the boat is all over the place, she thinks we are under sail and keeps giving Captain the side eye of “why aren’t you at the wheel taking care of us right now??”
We have friends who are held up with their boat in Sturgeon Bay. They have had a rough summer. They had moved their new, towable, boat to Lake Winnebago this summer to try something new but after he got a raging (I mean hospitalized bad) infection from having his feet in the water there and the recovery their summer had been completely turned upside down. Kent was recovered now and they made the decision to take their boat out and move it back to Door County for the rest of the season. Since they couldn’t go out with this wind (even power boaters are like “nope!”) we invited them over for brunch. So, when we took Kona for her morning walk, we headed to the grocery store to get some fresh additions for our meal. Wanting to stretch my legs and avoid multiple trips to land we walked the breakwater and the marina. We met a really cool couple on a power cat that was from St. Joseph Michigan (a town I lived in many moons ago). Very cool couple. We watched another family try to take their small Bayliner out of their slip to the boat ramp (yep, a week before Labor Day and folks are taking their boats out already). The wind is so that even inside the marina this little boat struggled and was having trouble making forward progress and going in circles instead. We were on our way to help when a member of their party went to help. She almost fell in as she pushed them away and at the last minutes jumped on their boat. It was a close call. Glad she didn’t fall in. In the end they made it to the boat ramp without trading paint with any other boats. I heard the wife apologize to the husband as we left “maybe today wasn’t a good day to do this!”
Soon enough Kent and Erin showed up and we took them to Ciara for brunch. The waves have built to the point that getting on and off the dinghy is now a bit more work. We have to leave a bit more rode when tied to the boat and then hold the boat steady ourselves against the waves in order to not snap the lines and send us all falling down.
We enjoyed time up on deck while Captain prepared bacon and fixings for our famous Bloody Mary’s. We watched the weather come in and before we knew it rain started to fall so we headed inside to enjoy our meal. Captain had re-sealed our hatches a few days ago as we have been having some leaks so he was excited to see if the repairs worked. They did! Yay! We had a lovely brunch, the highlight being some really fancy non-brie that I picked up behind the deli counter. I thought ½ pound would be too much, but there was none left! After 1:30pm they had to say their good-byes and head back home. I took a picture of a boat that had been in the water but was now sitting on its trailer back in the parking lot. The boat name? “Better then work.” I giggled a little and then signed realizing it was Sunday, and sadly/ironically, the boat was headed home for the weekend….so the owner could go back to work.
Since I had a bloody, I was soon called for an afternoon nap. Captain stayed up and read, had a salad and watched the weather roll in. He was able to see some cat paws way out on the horizon and document the dark water coming in, estimated to about 30 knots. See pictures for description.
I awoke and then Captain decided he needed a nap so we pretty much swapped places. He slept through the big change in wave action. As I was minding my own business and chilling out the boat was getting rocked more and more. Some waves were hitting us on the beam and sending us port to starboard on top of the bow to stern. Our anchor is holding really well, but our lithium batteries were knocked to the ground. Our kitchen drawers came out, our solar panels were migrating to the sea as they fell and I had to close our lee clothes as our food was now on the floor. I spent some time securing the boat and realizing this may be the “roughest” we have ever had at anchorage. I then sat on deck, chatted with my folks a little in between all my “Whee’s!” The waves are crashing on shore behind us and the waves are at least 4 feet high here in the anchorage.
It was late evening before we thought about dinner and neither of us was hungry yet. We decided to go to shore to charge batteries and take a long walk, confident that our anchor was holding well enough for some absence.
We heard some music so we followed it to the band shelter in which we had played Frisbee a few days earlier. There was a jazz band playing lounge music, most of which I have never heard (except Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Tax”). We sat and enjoyed it with everyone and Kona attempted to get pets from anyone who would look at her.
We returned to Ciara after dark. The solar panels had gone for another walk and one had actually made it to the sea! Thankfully it was still holding on to the boat plugged in so we recovered it and will have to find out tomorrow if it is ruined. Captain was sure we just had big gusts of wind, but when I showed him the kitchen drawers, I was determined right that the wave action had been the culprit. We made soup for dinner and occasionally would have to lift our bowls when we felt big waves coming and gimble them so they wouldn’t slosh all over us.
The wind isn’t calming overnight like it usually does so we went to bed rock n rolling. Squeaks from the samson post holding our anchor rode. Thump thump from an open cabinet. Whines from Kona. In that order, ad nauseum. Add in the zero gravity as we cuddled in the v-berth it took me awhile to fall asleep. I eventually got up and closed the door that was thumping (we had it open for a reason, but that reason got over-ruled for the night) and Kona eventually stopped whining.
So here we are. Finishing up an epic summer just babysitting Ciara and not able to much. It’s hard to explain how one can just sit with their thoughts and the day just dissolve from underneath you. We are both waxing philosophical at this point and enjoying the last of our down time. We had wanted to take our scooters to shore today or tomorrow but I think the wave action will make that really hard for us so tomorrow may be a lot of organizing Ciara for our final anchor pull of our large summer adventure.
