Well, We Didn't Get The Snow, But . . . . . .

S H I P' S L O G :

It didn't snow in Cocoa Beach but the wind sure did blow. I was hoping, indeed expecting that the front passing through Saturday night/Sunday would blow itself out and more "normal" winds would present themselves today. Well, the chances of that were slim and none and slim left town.

I got up this morning and walked down the dock to the sauna & showers and there, right there on the dock by a faucet was a puddle of ice and an icicle hanging all the way down to the water! I am not sure exactly how cold it got here last night but it had to be in the 20's. And the wind, it keep howling all night. Of course, it was blowing through the masts and rigging of all the boats in the marina and produced some incredible noise. It almost sounded like a crew of "foley men"( people who produce sound effects for movies and TV shows) hard at work, working over time no less.

When I got back and had breakfast, I kept listening to the weather and looking at the water and the wind. I was in a marina slip. To get out I would have to back out into a fairway about forty feet wide. ABISHAG is 39 feet, 41 with the dinghy on the stern, and the wind was coming right down the fairway. It was a steady 25-30 with gusts still to 40. No sailboat backs up well and ABISHAG perhaps a little less well than most. And at 11 tons, once she gets moving, that's a lot of kinetic energy underway. In little or now wind, it wouldn't be terribly difficult, even for me who has not had a lot of practice pulling off this particular maneuver, but in the wind we had today, there was not way I could pull it off. Indeed, a couple from Canada( the one's whose daughters made the Christmas Cookies) were going to leave today but also postponed because of the wind. The fact that it was also bitterly cold again helped make that decision.

So Melbourne will have to wait a day. The wind has now died down and, while it is still cold and getting colder, tomorrow the temp is "supposed" to get up into the high 50's and the wind is "supposed" to be no more than 10. My finances have taken a bit of a beating but perhaps I win Powerball or Megabucks, though I haven't bought a ticket.

In any event, It will be Melbourne tomorrow, Vero Beach the day after and Fort Pierce after than. NOAA promises that by Wednesday the weather will settle back into the seasonal mode with temps in the 70's. While I'll believe that when I "feel it," it does give me hope. Of course, I would be more hopeful if the NOAA weather reports stopped talking about how to recognize the signs of frostbite and how best and carefully to use space heaters. They seem a bit inconsistent. Me, I think I'll sleep in the sauna . . . . .if there is room.