Block Island Storm

On Monday, Aug 26 Gerry and I were out at Block Island for a few days relaxing while our recently moved into condo was in a state of chaos! We had plans to meet up with Carol and Dick (good friends from our PDQ world) for dinner and drinks on the island. We were looking forward to catching up with them to pick their brains about the ICW for our upcoming trip.

As the afternoon went by, the alarms on our phone started to go off with weather alerts. We decided around 3 pm it was not a a great idea to get off the boat and have dinner ashore. So, we headed back to the boat showered and pulled the dingy out of the water to prepare for the storm. As with any summer storm, until it actually hits, you just don’t know what you will get.

As the storm got closer we could tell it was going to be a big one. In preparation, Gerry started the engines and during the height of the storm, was putting them in and out of gear to take the pressure off of the mooring.

Shortly after this video was taken we noticed a very large tug dragging toward us. With our captain’s hats on, we discussed our plan for this possible emergency. We both put on foul weather gear and life jackets. The plan was, if this big tug got much closer, and was going to hit us, I would make my way to the bow of the boat and release our mooring lines. This would allow us to get out of the way and avoid any damage.

As you can tell from my expression, we were concerned but felt prepared. The first image (of these three) is of the tug getting tangled with a sailboat in front of us. The entire experience was about 40 minutes, with about 20 minutes of really bad winds. Reports after were the winds were sustained at 40 MPH with gusts 52 to 58 MPH. In the end, we were just fine. Happy to report, no damage or issues other than a little stress!

Around 7 pm the sun was coming back out and we dropped the dingy into the water and with wine and beer we took a harbor cruise.

My moral of the story is:

“It’s much easier to prepare for a possible emergency, than to deal with an actual emergency”.