Several dear sailing friends of 50 years have been in the line of fire of Hurricane Irma: Skeeter up the Miami River and Bud in Ft. Myers, just west of Irma's eye wall track. No news is presumably good news, as power and phones are down. Both friends had nearby cement hurricane shelters for retreat and presumably are emerging to the clear skies following Irma's passage.
Ironically, with the center of Irma passing up Florida's West Coast rather than East Coast, the counterclockwise wind preceding the hurricane center's passage was northeasterly, i.e. offshore. Which initially blew the water out of Florida and Tampa Bays, making for lowtide, rather than the high tide hurricane surge predicted.
Locally here on Monterey Bay, the Monterey Peninsula is back lit this morning by an almost continuous lightning show of a low pressure moving northwest, up the Big Sur Coast. Thunderstorms with brief heavy rain are forecast, and the orange juice sunrise does not belie that forecast.
On the subject of thunder, yesterday at noon a parade of Scottish pipers and drummers marched down the Capitola Esplanade during the annual end-of-summer Art and Wine Festival. As AH would confirm, the music of bagpipes is a heart racing, stirring, "going to war for Scotland," sound. The Festival came to a halt, and dozens joined in following the pipers parade to the nearby bandstand.
Some years ago at about this date, we were racing AMERICA JANE III in a coastal race from SF Bay to Southern CA. North of Pt. Conception we encountered similar tropical weather, and just after sunset the rigging began to glow green. As we were on a metal boat, with a metal steering wheel, this was disconcerting to say the least. The St. Elmo's fire lasted about 20 minutes before fading and nothing came of the experience, except nobody wanted to steer. I'd only seen St. Elmo's once before, when working on the masthead of the all black, Mull aluminum 50 footer LA FORZA DEL DESTINO in Miami, my tools began to glow.
My alarmed shout to Kim Desenberg, on deck below, contained no stutter hesitation: "Lower me down IMMEDIATELY!!"
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