So many of you have reached out today. Thank you. We’re absolutely fine. I will say, however, that I’d like to not go through that again. And we only saw 40 knots of wind from the remnants of Ida. But the rain! My goodness, I’ve never seen rain like that before. We found a new “leak” on Atlas. The rain was so copious, the wind so intense, that it was funneling in through our companionway hatch like a burst pipe. A few “free” towels from Safe Harbor Pilots Point was able to take the edge off.

We left the Vineyard yesterday and, sadly, bypassed our planned stop in Block Island as the wind was forecast from the various models to gust to 50 mph. While we fully trusted the Cruising Club of America moorings in Salt Pond, BI to handle those winds and our vessel we weren’t super interested in spending 12+ hours in 30+ knots of wind on a mooring. So we found a slip at an expensive and lousy marina in Mystic to take refuge from Ida. Putting our lessons from TS Henri to work we left the sails on, canvas (Bimini and dodger) up and pillows out in the cockpit…and promptly saw the strongest winds yet! Of course the winds were strong only for a few hours and the day turned out to be warm and sunny. I could write a whole blog post on being governed by forecasts days out but…wait, maybe I should do that?!

The forecasts, while whacky AF over the last 3 days , finally coalesced and we expected to be woken around midnight when the winds came through. Amazingly only having to predict 6 hours in to the future allows a high success rate for these weather models. So on the dot we were awoken at midnight with big winds. The rains arrived, though, with mother fucking authority around 1:30 a.m. My goodness it was intense! Of course, like the social media mavens we are, we took zero photos or video of the experience. We were too busy tending to water ingress and other assorted crises. In all it rained from about 7 p.m. until 6 a.m. and the winds lasted from about midnight to around 5 a.m.

I will pat myself on the back, somewhat, with the tying of the boat. Knowing what we were in looking for, I tied the boat up so well it looked like Spider-Man’s wet dream. So once the winds came up it was a cursory check of our new and robust dock lines to ensure the boat was well. And it was. To be honest, I was a bit surprised that I actually fell back to sleep during the maelstrom as I was so confident that the boat was fine. It was wet AF down below, but that could be dealt with later. In fact, prior to heading back to the wet bed, I flicked on the AC to get a head start on the humidity down below. Of course the power was knocked out shortly later (I presume) so the AC shut down.

Tomorrow we’re bracing for an early start so we can take advantage of as much fair current as we can while we make our way to Oyster Bay, which should take us about 11 hours from our location here in Mystic. Saturday will see us transit the East River again as we post up in Jersey City for our week in NYC. We’re all looking forward to it. Check back tomorrow afternoon for the 2nd edition of the Muppet Chronicles. It’s not must read material but it should provide a momentary chuckle. Thanks again to so many of you for your concern. We’re still safe in our Marine RV and the adventure continues. I just hope we’re done with these silly storms for a while… #foreshadowing