June 8th 2019
We were woken early by the racket the wind made. Captain Fluffy was a bit alarmed by all the noises and the howling wind. He was restlessly pacing back and forth, eyeing the roof hatches anxiously. Apparently there was a loud clanking sound that he couldn’t appreciate. When we checked to see what was causing the clanking sounds, it turned out that the radar reflector had come undone. One end was dangling free, bashing against the mast. Nothing to be done about that now. We have to wait until the wind subsides before we can fasten it again. Because in order to repair it, one of us has to climb the into mast. And that is not something you want to do when a storm is raging over. Hopefully the reflector doesn’t blow off completely before the end of the storm, or maybe we should hope that it blows off because we would be relieved from the noise and the dreadful job of climbing the mast…
Tomorrow and Monday is Pentecost, national holidays. That means stores will be closed, so if we want to get fresh veggies and bread we have to do groceries today. Around three o’clock in the afternoon the worst of the storm had passed, so we ventured outside to do our shopping.
On our way to the supermarket we saw snapped of branches everywhere. And we were not the only boat in the marina that had suffered damage; one had a torn genoa, and another a torn spray hood. In the commercial marina a whole tree thick as three grown men had snapped in two. According to our wind speed meter we had gusts up to 42 knots, that’s 9 Beaufort. All in all we’re really glad not to be anchored somewhere…