I’m behind on getting all the text sitting just above this out. Part lazy and part busy, I guess. We are still traveling on the boat and having a good time, but we are seeing many things for the 2^nd or 3^rd time on the ICW, so there is no major news to give you. I do intend to marry photos to the text I already have and get it out soon. When I do it will appear in sequence before this entry since it happened before.

Some of you may be wondering about the hurricane. Yesterday I looked at Weather Underground. It said winds here (at Brunswick Landing Marina) tomorrow (Thursday) would be in the 20’s and nearly 40 mph on Friday. Today it says Friday winds will be 70. We were planning a nice 3 days in Jekyll Island but decided to come over here, considered a “hurricane hole”, after only 1 day. Good thing, because we had a lot of prep with the hurricane possibly hitting here. Winds will get pretty stiff, and may reach even over 100 mph, no one knows for sure. They are evacuating some of the Florida east coast now.

So we have prepared for the worst and hope for the best. I took all the isinglass and canvas down today for the first time ever. All cushions and anything movable has been taken downstairs and stuffed in the V berth, on the bunks in the middle bedroom and in the front of the salon. The dinghy is down in the water between us and our sailboat next door neighbor. His dinghy is in in the water in front of ours. Looks pretty bare outside.

The docks here are strong, floating and with high pilings. We can tie the boat down tightly because it and the docks move together. The pilings are considerably higher than any predicted storm surge. The greatest worry we have now is that a larger power cat across the main dock from us gets caught by the wind and flipped clear over the dock on top of us. It weighs half what we do. It’s not tied too well. I think its owners are gone. That would take quite a wind, so hopefully it won’t happen.

We are scheduled for yearly medical & dental appointments in Sarasota anyway, and were planning to leave Friday before any of this craziness started. Now we’ll leave Thursday (tomorrow) because if winds really get to 70 on Friday roads will likely be closed. Emergency services all shut down at 40 mph around here – they say nothing can really be done under those circumstances anyway, and we want to be out of here before any of that. All those living on their boats here (about 100 people) had a meeting today at 11 AM in the marina clubhouse. Many have been boating longer than us and have been through storms before. As far as we can tell they are all leaving for inland.

There’s nothing more we can do for the boat. If another boat does not hit it and there’s no major flying debris it will probably be OK.

Pretty exciting stuff. Might be nice to be here for the great adventure. Maybe next time.