No Place Like Home for the Hurricanes

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We like to be at our own dock on June 1 and through hurricane season. So, we don’t go far on Bay Breeze from June through Thanksgiving. We travel with an eye on Wundergound.com and stay within an easy return radius.

AQUAVIT has enabled us to break out of our range. Because we can make more miles a day under power we can get to a marina for a slip or haul out in the event we see the “cone of death and destruction” is either where we are on the Atlantic coast or something headed to Apalachee Bay.

Because a disturbance off Belize was forecast to develop into a tropical storm and head up the Gulf, we kept an eye on the weather. We’re thankful for the assistance friends extended to help us stay current with updates.. When the Big Bend coast was included in the “cone”, we found a well-protected marina on Hilton Head in South Carolina for AQUAVIT and then rented a truck to come home.


Alberto is now making his way north but Tallahassee is still getting rain! 


The drive back was an easy 5 hrs or so. Lee was the lector to catch us up with the "On the road with Toto" blog Jeff and Courtney are posting about their terrestrial adventures wandering the country in their Airstream. To prepare for Alberto, and future storms while we are cruising, we tidied up Bay Breeze’s dock lines and main sail. It takes a couple hours to close the shutters and move stuff to prepare our house for a storm. We moved our truck and boats to town to avoid the potential storm surge hazard.

An added bonus of coming back is a chance to see the kitties and bring back our little dingy and 2hp kicker. We have not found a need for a dingy yet and, looking ahead, we can’t imagine we will need a tender. We will just stay on the boat if we anchor out or use the water taxis if we are on a mooring ball. Now our swim platform is accessible.
Our 1957 Grumman sailing dingy rode out the storm on our back deck in town. 

Alberto made landfall a little east of Panama City. Our area had some wind and rain, but not much different than a summer thunderstorm - only a bit longer. Fortunately we were prepared for more than we got. Donna and Jody pulled their new C-Dory 25 they are keeping at our dock while we are away. Thankfully this episode wasn’t worse and is over.

Returning to Hilton Head, we stopped at Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge - nice trails and surrounded by tidal oyster bars - perfect for the iconic Oyster Catchers the refuge uses as a signature species.
Pinckney Island NWR on the Intracoastal off Hilton Head


 
We re-provisioned and visited a local beach park - first class all the way! Tomorrow we return our rental truck and then lock out of this marina and get underway. We only have one target date on our dance card, with a reservation for an expensive marina in NYC for a couple weeks of theaters, museums, botanical gardens, and the 4th of July at Lady Liberty.

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