Heck of a day

Fernandina Beach
30 42.88 N 081 28.56 W

We were very glad to be on a mooring yesterday.   It was wild with gale winds mixed with spring tides.  All around us, boats at anchor were dragging.  Boats on moorings were spinning in circles dragging the mooring balls under the boat.   Next to us was a trawler.  As Libby watched, the wind picked up his dinghy and flipped it over, motor in the water.  

There was a big schooner, perhaps 90 feet long, one of those Maine Windjammers.  They had 200-300 feet of anchor rode out and it was doing circles around their ahcnhor endangering any other boat around.  Our friends on Argonauta dragged out into the ship channel, but they were glad to do so because it took them out of range of that schooner.   A big Hinkley yacht, a million dollar boat, dragged for hours before giving up and moving to a spot up the creek.

The problem is that in this spot, three big rivers converge and we sit in the confluence.  When the tide changes, there are loops and swirls in the currents going every which way.   When that is combined with strong wind, it is really chaotic.

Meanwhile, the same front was causing more serious problems elsewhere.  See the radar map above, that I snapped on my Droid.   In North Carolina, they had 65 tornadoes yesterday.   Dave and Cathy in their new house had to run for their tornado shelter.  Two tornadoes came close.   In Raliegh, Nick was on a weekend pass from Fort Bragg.   Fort Bragg got hit bad by one tornado, then another tornado came within a block of Nick in downtown Raleigh.

Like I said, it was a heck of a day.