Soooooooooooooooooo. Happy Happy is now about to experience her third major storm. We have been lucky that we really weren't in the path of Joaquin in Tennessee so only had to deal with the effects of flooding mitigation on the locks we traversed, and had the benefit of helpful humans during Colin in Punta Gorda to help with tying up to deal with storm surge that went over the docks. This time we are in somewhat of a hurricane protected "honey hole", up the St Johns River and tied up to floating docks, but of course this is an act of mother nature and nothing's to be taken for granted.
Our slipmates/neighbors, on a 48ft sailing catamaran are wintering over here and told us stories of being in un-sheltered waters in the Carribbean when their anchor pulled loose in 100 mph winds which got our attention. Needless to say we are on standby for this one and hoping for the least impacts (hey that's what insurance is for right?). There are a lot of liveaboards on our dock so there is a lot of community here for learning, getting help with projects and of course docktails. They are all guardedly optimistic that the storm will pass by and are already planning a "hurricane party".
Whle we wait out our time here for the temperatures to cool enough to begin our journey down the St Johns we've been able to get to a lot of the major projects that made their way to the top of the list during our last cruising segment. The upper helm now has a much improved chart table with red, LED night lighting and a raised shelf to house all the navigation instruments in a more rough water stable position. We've also replaced the lounge seating on the port side with new helm chairs for the Admiral and Captain and added new carpeting. Very comfy!
Before
During
After! (hmmmm, hope we don't need this for insurance after L9 passes by!)
Of course there are always unintended consquences............. the removal and replacement of the lounge seating caused an imbalance of weight (for a 20,000 lb boat, really?!), that resulted in a trip to the local Lowe's to get a few hundred pounds of patio paving stones to counterbalance the new layout (another Advil seniors moment for sure!).
We've also replaced some worn out carpeting with new teak and holly flooring in the galley.
Life is good.