Tornados

Sunday, we took the dinghy over to Snake Creek, and fished a little .  Ended up going out Snake Creek into the ocean a little ways.  Not many fish.  Lots of boat traffic.  Probably try that area again during the week.  I'm getting sage fishing advice from the pirate Yoda.  On the way back in, we passed an anchored trimaran, "Grey Hound."  We met them last year in Marathon.  They're friends of Phil and Cathie on "Buddy" (ex trimaran but now Rosborough owners.)

"Buddy" arrived here yesterday.  They're two slips down from us.  They're having an issue with the trim and tilt on one engine--it won't lower from full up position.  They have twin Yamaha 50's like ours, so I loaned Phil my shop manual.

On our dock, we have boat neighbors who trailered their boats from Virginia, Michigan's upper peninsula, and Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin.  I guess I should stop whining about the 1300 miles we drove.  The U.P. people drove over 2000 miles.  He drove a friends truck towing the boat, and she drove their car along behind.

There was quite a storm last night.  Heavy thunderstorms with tornado warnings.  It reminded me of a long night I spent in Guntersville, AL a couple of years ago, while cruising down the Tennessee river with my young dude friend Bret.  We were on his leaky old Catalina 25' sailboat, tied to a dock in an old run down marina.  About 2 am, the tornado sirens started blaring, and a recorded voice was broadcast over loudspeakers that a tornado was headed for Guntersville.  Take shelter immediately.  We woke up, jumped out of the boat, and ran to shore.  Our first impulse was to hide out in the bathrooms.  When we got there, I looked around and realized that the bathrooms were built into a corner of a high dry stack storage building.  Boats stacked three high and only sheet metal walls.  The vision of similar buildings on Pine Island after hurricane Charlie--all twisted and collapsed with boats falling everywhere did not instill confidence in this location.  So in the pitch black of night, with only lightning flashes to guide us, and of course in pouring rain, we set out to find a more secure spot.  The blaring sirens helped enforce the feeling of impending doom.  We stopped beside a large dumpster, and considered hopping inside it, but it was right beside the dry stack boat storage, and there was a good chance that a boat or two could crush the dumpster.  We walked out to a shelter house on one of the floating boat docks just to get out of the rain.  Obviously, not a tornado proof spot.  We sat there for a while, on the rickety old docks in the shabby shelter house trying to think of a safe place to go.   Finally, we decided the leaky old sailboat was as good a place as any.  If the tornado was going to get us, it could get us any where we had been.  Back to the boat we went.  Needless to say, we didn't perish in a tornado that night.  So, in the storm last night, with tornado warnings, when Pam said "maybe we should go somewhere ashore and seek shelter,"  I told her I was staying right here on the boat. 

My young dude friend Bret, has now decided that he wants to become a railroad locomotive engineer.  He's moved to southern Indiana to study trains.  While cruising through some canals down here, it seems he may have been driving a train in this neighborhood.

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It's a long way to the nearest rails, but somehow this caboose ended up in this guy's back yard.  Bret?