Big Thunderstorm
We slept until 8am. It was wonderful. We took Kona girl for her morning walk and got some coffee at Kitty’s, the lovely coffee truck here at the state park.
We returned to Ciara and Captain made some more bacon for some Bloody Mary’s while I wrote my blog. Kona hung out in the sun. I think she loves the boat.
We played some music together for quite a while and did a few boat projects. The head is really giving me nightmares as I don’t understand why we have a small fresh water leak. Urk. I hope we can figure this out before the summer really gets underway as it is having me manually turn on and off the water throughout the day (I have crawl up and under the V-Berth to get to the valve. Boooo.
The weather for today had been predicted to rain all day with thunderstorms scattered. As the day approached that forecast changed to a mostly perfect day with lessening chances of storms later in the evening. Since the weather was beautiful, we took a hike to the lighthouse where we chatted with a guy named Kevin who was camping here. He has been bringing his sailboat up here for the last 40 years so we had a nice chat. He asked if we heard the trumpet the night before at 9pm. I told him that was me. He thanked me as he thought it was really cool to hear. He thought maybe there were boy scouts camping nearby.
We came back to Ciara late afternoon and we were hungry so we decided to make Cincinnati Chili. This uses Freeze-Dried ground beef and my Freeze-Dried Cheese. Being out second attempt at cheese I took some ahead of time and sprayed it with some water on a paper towel and put in the fridge for a little bit. That did the trick! The cheese came back really well and went on the chili as shredded cheese and melted perfectly. The meal was perfect.
We had guests expected later in the evening so as I did dishes, we prepped the berths for our Claire and Peter. There were now storms on their way, so it looked like were weren’t going to get missed. Captain pulled up the radar and we looked to the north. The sky was pretty dark. For some reason, I didn’t think much of it, but as the storm approached the pressure must have dropped quickly because Kona girl reacted and got very antsy. I went up deck to see the front coming closer. As I looked, Carl, our anchor duck, appeared to be loose and headed off to sea. I was a little distraught for a moment thinking he was a goner until I realized he wasn’t moving at all….we were! The front was pushing us around 180 and about the time I realized what was going on the bow of Ciara made a hard turn to starboard and we held our breath as we watched our depths and the shore to make sure the anchor did not come loose. I did not. Thank goodness. That is a great anchor!!! We have never used an anchor marker before so it was fascinating to see where our anchor was in comparison to how we float and pull against it.
I hurried down into the cabin and battened down the portholes. We quickly brought loose things down and prepared for the storm. Oh my it rained! This very well might be the first real rain of the season and Ciara showed all her leaks. I think I counted six leaks. Nothing major, just expected and no fun. Just more stuff to do. We hunkered down in the pilot house as we watched our anchor alarm. Kona was cuddling hard with Captain. I took few pictures. One you can see is dark, and the other the windows behind Captain are bright white…that would be lighting!
The storm calmed but it continued to rain for another 2 hours. We rested and waited it out. Thankfully Claire and Peter had stopped on their drive to eat and wait out the storm so just as the storm subsided, they pulled into the boat ramp where we would meet them. I had to pump out about 3 inches of water from the dinghy. Somethings don’t make a happy Deb. And rainy night trips to shore are one of them.
Shortly after 11pm we were all aboard. Mopping up what was left of the wet spots and catching up for a short bit before calling it a night. A nice calm night after the storm.
