One Of Them Florida Storms!

SHIP'S LOG:

The day was to be a work day but it turned out too nice. Not that I didn't do some work. I had to finish off the repair to the caprail/toerail. The F-27 set very well but had to be sanded down and all the rough and sharp edges removed. It really didn't take too long and then it was too nice a day not go go sailing.

There was about 10 knots of wind out of the S/SW, as it is most days, and there was little or no humidity. There was just the slightest bit of haze on the far horizon and a few puffy white clouds here and there. Even NOAA was calling for a beautiful day with "just a 20% chance of some showers late in the afternoon." Since they daily cover their collective butts with a forecast of of "a 30% chance of showers and thunderstorms," I went sailing. And it was great. It was naother one of those sailing days where I pretty much went where the wind was blowing - a couple of hours that way and then a couple of hours that way and then a couple of hors this way and back to the mooring. No place I need to be and all the time in the world to get there.

On the way back in I noticed that the sky was beginning to cloud up some. The clouds didn't appear to be moving all that fast and seemed to be just crossing west to east. Whatever "unpleasant weather" might be happening, it certainly looked to pass well north.
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After getting to the mooring, I cleaned up the boat from the sail and put everything in place, and then headed into the Clubhouse to get online. In the 2 minutes it took to get in, a black line appeared in the north, indicating a squall line or storm front, again well north, so it seemed. Sitting on the porch and gassing with a couple of members we kept checking out the line assuring one another that it would certainly pass north and would miss us completely. Even when the sky grew ominously dark, we still felt that it would give us a miss.

That communal opinion changed with the wind direction, when what had been South at 10 turned in an instant to 25 out of the north. And it increased. And with that shift came the large, dark, black and purple clouds. I am not sure what the steady wind speed got up to, but 40 mph wasn't far off and the gusts easily hit 50! At first there was no rain but that changed too. The "wall of rain" eventually blotted out the view of the bridge 3 miles away and advanced rapidly.

And it hit big time, along with thunder and some rather spectacular lightning. It rained so hard that water from the street rushed down our driveway and onto the beach scouring a canyon through the sand to the water. It was spectacular! Just like the storms in florida but this time I was on the beach! It didn't last too long, 20-25 minutesbut it must have dropped a good inch of rain.

In one sense, it was a fun storm, lots of flash but no real damage to anyone or anything. It was one that you could sit on the porch with a drink and enjoy. It would have been less entertaining on ABISHAG but 4 of those in Florida were more than enough for me this year!