The Stormy Season

Well, the wind is blowin harder now

50 knots or there abouts,

there's white caps on the ocean,

and I'm watching for waterspouts.- Trying to Reason with Hurricane Season, by Jimmy Buffett

It's finally here, another hurricane season. Although, as our friend Clyde reminded us recently, the daily thunderstorm can be more of a nuisance to us than the occasional big storm. The photo above is a squall line that rolled through here on Friday with enough wind and lightening to leave us feeling pretty happy to be tied up, and not at anchor. No photoshop on this one, just a boiling black line of angry sky.

Lots of people have a real fear of hurricane season, but we've been living on boats and in the 'Sunshine' state long enough to have a healthy appreciation for them, and not a debilitating fear. As much as we like to joke about the inadequacies of NOAA and their weather forecasting, they and the National Hurricane Center have gotten pretty good at short term weather guessing. We now have plenty of warning for approaching storms and have ample knowledge to prepare the boat. CNN, Fox, and the Weather Channel have all learned how to dramatize the coming Tropical Storms because it keeps people tuned in. They take full advantage of what I like to call "the dart board effect". If your eye was in the middle of a dart board, and someone 15 feet away throws a dart toward the board, as soon as it leaves the hand it will look like it's coming straight at the board. Even if the throw were to hit 5 feet above the board, from the perspective of the center of the target it will look like it's coming straight at you until the last few feet where it veers off. It's an illusion which makes every storm coming off of Africa look like it's coming straight at everyone from the Caribbean all the way up the east coast. Considering that the width of deadly winds in most storms is about 30 miles, the odds of any one location being hit in a year are far lower than the Insurance Industry would like you to believe. Yes, I know, that's little consolation if you are in that statistically small area! So, we prepare, we plan, we pay attention, but we don't lose sleep over living in the hurricane zone.

For the foodies out there, Star has been baking bread almost daily lately, a sure sign that we're starting to get bored and have too much time on our hands. We're really getting antsy to get moving again, but still have a week and a half of our month at the marina left. It's a good thing she enjoys baking, because I sure love eating!

On a sad note: Heaven has a new African Grey Parrot, Toots, who's probably flying around barking like a Schipperke and screaming at all the other birds "Don't fuck with me, dammit!" Toots, I forgive you for biting the crap out of my nose that time, and our hearts and sympathy go out to her parents.