What do you do when
marooned on a boat? You read, you watch movies, you text family and
friends, you cook and eat and wash up and you roll your eyes at your
spouse and they roll theirs back at you in sheer boredom. You give
thanks, grateful thanks, that you are bored.
It is Saturday night
as I write this, and I see some streaks of white sky in the East, for the
first time today. It is oppressively humid, but that’s normal. The
temperature is moderate, which is not normal, not in August. No rain,
but overcast everywhere except those white streaks. The wind has
picked up, flapping flags and tree limbs. Not scary, just pleasant.
Anything to move this wet air!
When I woke up this
morning, the rain was torrential, just bucketing down. The wind was
moderately high, in the 30s I’d guess. Raven rocked gently
in her slip and I yawned and stretched and called out, “Where’s
the storm?” Some folks can’t believe I could sleep through all
the hub-bub, but a sailboat is not like a boat that floats on top of
the water, like a fishing boat or even a trawler. A sailboat’s keel
sinks in deep and the boat becomes one with the sea, rocking as it
does, riding up and down, not slapping back and forth like a boat
with no keel. And Raven has a full keel, meaning she’s sunk
in with the water for most of her length. Believe me, there’s
nothing more peaceful.
Other things are not
peaceful, like checking up on family and friends in harm’s way (so
far, all okay). The rain stopped here after about 3 or 4 hours – I
even did the laundry today. Other places are not so fortunate and
have been drenched for 12 hours straight. We are hoping Harvey will
just lumber up north and die on the North Texas plains, but it has
stopped all forward progress, still spinning, like it is considering
its next move. Hopefully it will move, soon, and give some relief to
the folks being pummeled. Hopefully also it won’t move this way. So
far the runoff has been impressive but has not swamped us. Hopefully
also it won’t go back out in the Gulf and whirr itself back into a
hurricane. That has happened before.
We went out earlier
in the day, during a lull in the downpour, to take photos of the
docks and the swirling Kemah channel, which is shouldering a gigantic
amount of water past our door on its way to Galveston Bay. The water
has gone down about 6” from the photos we took, which is good. It
was originally forecast, and may still happen, that Harvey will turn
East and dump huge amounts of rain on Houston, which will flood down
to this area, down the Kemah channel and out to the Gulf. A huge
amount of rain could drown the standing docks and keep us on the boat
for a couple of days.
Here are a couple of glimpses - the first I took when we ventured out this morning (Movie #1). We were out for about 5 minutes and then a band of rain came through and drenched us. The second is a video David took from under a shelter (Movie #2). I went back to the boat and peeled off my sodden clothes. The last is a photo that was taken after I was sure the rain had stopped!
To view videos, right click on movie #1 or movie #2 and then click on the "go to link" address. Then click on the arrow in the upper right corner. Sorry for all the complications, but we couldn't get the darn things to load on the blog.
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| The Kemah bridge is on the right. The fuel dock across the way is fixed, and sunk. The wooden dock you see is also fixed and the water is lapping over the top. This is as high as it got, today at least. |
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