The "H" word.........

Happy Island... watch your head

We're still anchored in electric blue water in front of Happy Island. We went to happy hour there, which was fun until I found that the unlit hallway to the bathroom had a 5 ft. tall cement ceiling. As I've just started seeing fewer stars in my vision, I thought I'd blog. (author's note- Chardonnay doesn't heal head trauma but it helps you forget).

We're meeting more cruisers, and the thing that's on everyone's mind is "What are you doing for hurricane season?". Kind of sounds like college kids making summer vacation plans, but there is a serious side to this. Kirstin and I have been on a boat at sea during 70 knot winds for a total of about 20 minutes. We were blindsided by a freak super cell in the Chesapeake last year. We had zero visibility, and completely lost control of the boat........spinning around with no orientation. The chart plotter said we were rotating, but we had no other indication of it, as we were like Dorothy in the tornado. It was positively terrifying. Fortunately, we had ignored out instincts to race the storm to the marina and followed our sailing book's advice and headed for deep water in bad weather. That saved us a lot of fiberglass repair work.

Hurricanes start at about that wind speed, and go up towards an inconceivable 200 mph. There's not enough rum in the Caribbean for us to get our heads around what that would be like. Insurance company's don't like that notion either, so they set "the hurricane box". It's a piece of ocean that is a no-go zone from July 1 to Nov 1. We are straddling the southern edge of our box now.........12 degrees, 40 minutes latitude.

Now, this doesn't mean we're safe. A hurricane won't skid to a halt just because we've tip-toed out of bounds, like in football. I guess the only benefit is our estate will include the insurance company's payment. So what do you do? We monitor NOAA and many other weather services.........and we have a plan to high-tail it and run for a "hurricane hole" if one arises. There are many bays around here which offer great protection.

We're also figuring out where we go from Grenada. Venezuela and Columbia are out. Trinidad is apparently like Baltimore without the police. We'll probably sail to Bonaire, Aruba, and Curacao............possibly then to Central America. Then it would be a pretty hard slog to Miami and our new winter base. Still a lot of time to figure this out...........and a lot of rum punches to help us make a sober decision.

Anyway, as we live outside, you can tell the weather is changing. A little more humid........a few more squalls...........and we saw lightning for the first time the other day. Happy Hurricane season !!!