Catch up - September 2011

SEPTEMBER and OCTOBER 2011

One day in early September Patty and Gary and young Donovan took Dan and I surf fishing at the National Seashore.  Driving along in the car we saw this three foot rattler crossing the road. I just had to get a picture.  It was so beautiful.

Safety of the roadside bushes.

Donovan loved the beach.

Gary got the gear and set up his surf poles with shrimp bait

Had to put the poles together first

Soon after this picture out came the chairs and beach umbrellas, but keeping up with rebaiting the lines took some focus and energy.  We were rewarded by three whitings(fish)

During this time sometime Patty and Gary, Dianne and Jim and Dan and I went clamming which required actually moving our boats from the slips and a five mile trip.  It was my first time trying to catch, dig, clams.  We did it with no equipment except hands and feet.  Feet wiggle and dig in the shallow, muddy bottom of a patch found by one of the other four native experts.  Once a likely shell is "felt" by toes, the toes dig a bit and then we pick up the clam with a hand, if possible, or a two foot squeeze and lift if the water is too deep.  We were able to find lots; a few hundred of varying sizes- which made steamers, stuffed oven-baked, and chowder extradinaire!

THEN..

Now it is October 9th and we have prepared the boat as well as we could for the storm working her way along the Florida coast that hadn't been officially named.  Thus The No-Name Storm. We received rain and lots of wind.  Before the storm really developed we went exploring.

Nice day to check out the conditions at the National Seashore and Merritt Wildlife Refuge

Then along came the “no name” storm October 9-11.  Lesser developed storms, (lower wind forecast and less clear development of a central, swirling mass called the eye) do not receive names from the weather service.  They are not expected to develop tropical storm characteristics.  Well, “no name” perhaps should have had a name as it dumped lots of rain on already soaked areas, bringing down trees and wires and the wind along the Central Florida Coast reached hurricane force with 64mph measured at the Haulover Canal Bridge only four miles from our marina-- and 81mph measured out at the beach on Merritt Island!  For us it meant an afternoon, night and morning of sustained high winds before the storm moved away.

  As the pictures below show, Titusville sustained first 20-25knot winds for hours --then they grew until we had hours of 40-45kn winds.  Watch the difference between the mph measurement and knots.   We had “Near Gale to Strong Gale.” on the scale used to describe storms at sea.

Beaufort scale

  Wind whistles through rigging in our sailboat, into the boat through dorades, (funnel like protrusions that keep the air circulating through the boat) and depending on the direction, our firmly tied boats heel at the dock.  With the movement, the fenders, (ball-like rubber inflated to provide protection from the dock)squeek while the dock itself groans. It keeps your mind on the weather outside.

While sitting watching the electronics for a reading on the wind for hours, without being able to use our TVs or computers (electricity is off, cable lines down), we were able, to listen to marine stations on the VHF or Single Sideband radios.  There was at least one boat from the nearby anchorage that dragged and was destroyed. The boat dragged due to wind and the direction of the wind pushed the 40 ft.sailboat right in through the marina opening until it crashed and sunk at the nearest Tee Head!  Luckily one large motorboat saw what was coming and moved before the run-away struck him.  

On the fixed docks at the marina, things were quite wild during the “no name” storm,  with unattended boats perhaps hitting or bouncing high enough to hit the docks as the water surged and larger waves came in.  The fixed (wooden unmovable)docks are new and built between strong concrete and wood pilings, so the bouncing boats receive the damage because there is no “give” to the dock.  On E dock we just waited out the wind with a lot more protection and were thankful for our floating concrete docks.


                                   Out exploring before the main storm hit.

By now it was raining quite hard and sand was blowing. It was not comfortable to be out. 

Sand covering the plants

A little windy.

But later the birds came out....

As did this large gator!

Heron

Wood Stork

It's always good to look for shelter on a bad day. This is a restaurant over the Merritt Causeway where we stopped  on the way back to the marina 

Back on the boat it was quite windy..

for a pretty long 5 or 6 hours or more

Eventually we could all emerge onto the dock... These girls belong to one of the boats...

This is Puss, the neighbors cat.  Who does she remind you of?

Here some folks were decorated for Halloween

Later in October we got some of our stowed gear out of storage and took a weekend trip to Key West with a fellow BMW rider, Martin.

We saw Key Deer where we camped.

This restaurant has dollar bills stapled to all the walls.  I think there were over 10,000 individual bills stapled there.

We rode all the way down to Key West

Famous Duval St.

This is a sculpture to honor fishermen.

And then it was Halloween.  Samantha, as Willy Wonka (scarf) from the boat next to us.

See you again in November!