The temperatures dropped and the rain started on Wednesday. Today is Saturday and the rain has not only not abated but it has strengthened. The times when the rain lets up have almost disappeared. The wind, forecast to weaken yesterday and then today has found new energy sources. Sunday is forecast gale conditions all day. Gales are declared when wind speed is 35 knots or more.
Going ashore is getting to be an act of desperation. The crew of every boat dinghies ashore every day.
You can only sit in the dark and the cold and the creeping damp for so long. Then something breaks.
On Meredith we have reverted to all the usual tricks to alleviate cabin fever. Books have been read. Small inside jobs have been done and redone. Correspondence is fully caught up. All the children have been called. Twice.
Most evenings we dinghy over to the 6th Street dinghy dock and take a walk into Eastport to visit friends Randy and Donna. Randy and Donna have a dock with access to good showers and laundry. Not that we are using them but it sure is nice knowing rich people. The nightly bottle or 2 or 3 of decent wine and Connie and Donna's nightly dozen streamed crabs keep people sane.
The dinghy rides are brutal. Wet stinging rain and freezing temperatures freshened even more by the forward motion of the dinghy can get you down.
Today we went into town and caught the Green bus. We had nowhere to go and nothing to do. We just rode the bus. It was so nicely warm and offered a view which, although wet and gray, was very entertaining to two sodden persons stuck on the hook.
The Green Bus is good for this as it takes a full one hour to complete a full circuit of its route - twice as long as the yellow or orange or Gold bus.
As anxiously as we seek out entertainment it develops we are not alone.
Back on Meredith after our bus run today the interior was warming nicely from our ceramic heater. A knock on the hull interrupted the whisper quiet fan. Quickly Connie opened up the companionway concerned that our boat had committed some sort of offence to its neighbours.
Not so. A single middle aged man in a Collins Bay hat and heavy weather gear stood in his dinghy. He had stopped by for a chat. It was pouring rain, the mercury in the thermometer had put on its fleece overcoat and this guy is standing in a flooding dinghy wanting to chat.
So did we and so, since our guest refused the hospitality of the boat, we all stood in the rain and the cold and chatted trying to be heard over the drone of the generator - the generator powering that nice ceramic heater located only 4 feet from where we stood. Chatting. Yeah. We are all on the edge and in desperate need of human contact.
Turns out our visitor, Gabriel, shares mutual friends, Benoit and Andree, a couple with whom we traveled the ICW last year. Gabe and Ben and Andree all keep their boats at the Collin's Bay marina back in Ontario. Poor wet Gabe was single handing his boat, Eva Luna, to the Bahamas from Collins Bay and Ben and Andree had suggested he watch for us.
After 4 days alone on his boat he came looking. Although he refused an invitation on board today we will make it a point to see him tomorrow.
Unless the forecast of gale force winds turns out to be true even in the anchorage.
Tonight we will have an extra drink. Tomorrow may be an alcohol free day.
Damn I hate those alcohol free days.
May You live in interesting times as well.
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