Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Avoiding the Blob

Avoiding the blob
Daytona Beach Floriduh

One of the worst things to have while cruising are appointments A date you have to meet while travelling by boat can bring trouble. Instead of casually saling along you tend to push it a bit. Say the weather is looking a tad horrible where you are going and your first thought is to sit tight and wait it out a day. Well, you have an appointment! Press on or you'll miss your date! Suppose you wait a day and the weather gets worse? It's just rain! You are on a boat for Gods sake. Get moving!

Deb is a really good planner. I am a really poor planner. Deb decides when we will leave to make an appointment because I am habitually late for everything. Deb is also very conservative with her schedules. This gives us a buffer of time to sit and wait out any bad weather that may occur. Today we are using one of those days. There is a blob of rain and lightning south of us and moving up the coast. After a poor nights sleep, which we can't figure out why as it was totally peaceful, we both felt a day of rest was in order. No one really felt like driving through the blob. I can see Deb looking at the radar now and thinking we could have made it. She hates to modify a schedule.

The problem I see now is that Deb has used one of her "free day" cards and tomorrow will be a travelling come hell or high water type of day. This is when bad shit happens. This is where you are going through the mosquito lagoon in driving rain and thirty knot gusts and your glasses are too wet to notice the green mark they recently moved beacuse of shoaling.

This is where the powerboat coming up behind you doesn't see you because of the rain on his windshield and the fact that his wipers do not work. He's on autopilot, following the magenta line while playing solitare on his iPad and driving way too fast for the conditions. He has an appointment to get his wipers fixed. He sees you at the last second and stops just in time but not enough to keep his undersized and very shiny fortress anchor from snagging the tube of your dinghy hanging from the davits. Like walrus tusks the anchor punctures the tube and shreds your new chaps as he slams it into reverse. He then gestures an apology while yelling in a eastern European language and drives off. You miss the boat name because your glasses are wet and your binoculars are fogged.

This is where you are about to pick up that mooring in the driving thunderstorm. On the third try you snag the pendant and as you smile about your success, lightning strikes the fully extended and jammed boat hook you are struggling with on deck. You are a vegetarian remembered as fried bacon.
What is it with these friggin boat hook poles? Twist lock. My ass. It always fully extends and then jams when I pick up a mooring. Then I have this 20ft pole I have to do something with while cleating a line. A royal pain.
Sometimes you even venture out when there are storms brewing with the potential to become tropical storms or even hurricanes. Let's hope Joaquin goes out to sea. Sorry Bermuda.

This is why we sit today and let the blob on the radar bother someone else. We keep our fingers crossed that another blob doesn't come our way anytime soon.

Avoid appointments.
Cheers!
P

"Please. I haz appologize your dingy. Fix, yes? Do svidaniya. Go Yankees!"
(This was posted via email as a test. It usually  screws up the formatting so don't think I'm a boob who can't edit)