T Stands for Storms at Sea

 Hi and happy T day everyone.

As promised today I will share my boating adventure story from Friday. It will probably be rather dull as I mentioned it before, and I am sure people built it up to be more than it was. I will also warn you, this is a long post. Sorry!

Friday last week was a decent day weather wise. Seeing we've had a lot of dark and rainy days this July, my husband took a vacation day from work, and we decided to go out in his boat. We hadn't been out since June, which shows you how wet the weather has been.

First let me explain that we store the boat on it's trailer; we don't keep it in the water all summer. However, instead of pulling it back and forth from home we leave  and store the trailer at the marina. They have a big field where they put very large boats in winter, and during the summer the field is not as full, so we keep the boat there. Although we pay to store it, it doesn't cost a lot and comes out less than the cost of the gas we would used to trailer it home and back. Plus it saves a lot of hassle that to moving it back and forth between home and the marina's boat ramp would cause. 

When we got to the boat that morning, my husband went to hook the trailer up to his truck. That's when he realized that part of the trailer not needed for driving had broken.

I found this nice photo on the internet to explain if you aren't familiar with boat trailers. If you look on the bottom left side you see a part called the jack stand. It would be down  (as shown in the diagram) in order to store the boat when not in use. It keeps the trailer parallel to the ground so the bottom of the boat sits flat. When you are driving on a road trailering the boat, you would flip up the jack stand and and tighten it so that little wheel is not touching the road.

When we arrived Friday the crank that turns up the jack stand so we could move the boat down to the water had snapped a pin, and it wouldn't move into the up position. The first thing we had to do was leave and go find another jack sand, and we had to  come back and replace it. Luckily we found one at Harbor Freight Tools, and my husband could replace it and remove the old one, so all that it really did was set us back  about 90 minutes of boating time.

 

We put the boat into the water.

It was a nice day, humid and hot, and the water was calm, so I suggested we cruise 6 miles out to the Isles of Shoals to have our picnic lunch. It is much cooler being the 6 miles offshore than being right on the shore. The hubby liked that idea so we cruised out and tied off to one of the empty moorings in Gosport Harbor.  As it was Friday, there wasn't a lot of boat traffic or boats in the harbor.

I've mentioned the Isles of Shoals before. They are a group of small islands that are parts of  the states of New Hampshire and Maine.  

This  one in the above photo is Star Island and Gosport Harbor would be on the left where you see a couple of boats.

And this next photo is Smuttynose. Due to the angle of the photo as we were anchored in the Harbor when I took it, Gosport Harbor would be in front of it; the water is actually in the harbor.

Between those 2 islands is a man made seawall which creates this harbor.

This above photo is looking deeper into the harbor from out boat which was moored on one of the white moorings, just like you can see in this above photo.

And yes, if the sky looks  dark that's because while we were there we had not 1 but 2 storms comes through.

The first one wasn't too bad. The heavy rain went just beyond us so we had about 5 minutes of light wet.

 Now my husband's boat has what is called a cuddy cabin. It is small and not for living in. We use it for storage, and it does have some cushions, so one person could lay down and say, take a nap in there. (Or in our case usually a dog or two naps in there.)

During the rain, both my husband, myself and our 2 dogs squished into the cuddy cabin and waited out the storm. 

Then the sun was out again, and we thought that would be the random shower that those weather folks said could happen. We wiped off the seats and moved back outside. Pete and I even went for a swim off the back of the boat.

And since Maddie with her thick coat looked hot, my husband put her into the water to cool off. She likes to be wet and can swim great, but in the process she went underwater, which she didn't like.

I had barely dried off when we looked at the sky and saw this.

According the radar, which we were checking on our phones, this was a much larger storm with some thunder and lightening associated with it.

We would not miss it if we headed into shore, and we did feel safe being moored int he harbor.

Once again, into the cuddy cabin we went.

And the rain came down.

It took Maddie a little while to decide it was better to go into the cabin than stand in the rain, which meant even with a toweling, we also had a wet dog with us.

We had a bit of thunder and lightening too. 

The sun did come back out, and we went outside. I wish I had captured it on my camera, but I saw a big bolt of lightening  actually hit the water, closer than I would have liked. Luckily we were OK, and the storm moved quickly off the islands and further out to sea. It must have been rough out there though, as you can see the waves breaking on the rock jetty wall that close in the back of the harbor.

We heard later a private fishing boat had actually capsized further offshore, and the people had to be rescued by a Coast Guard Helicopter. Luckily no one was hurt.

Before the second storm was close enough to even know we would get it, I did snap a picture of my drink for T this week. (Be sure to stop by Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog for T this week.)

It's the floating Diet Coke bottle-smile.

Now I will finish my story. 

The day ended just as interesting as it began. On the way back to shore we stopped to do some mackerel fishing, and we had our best catch in a long time. All of them went back into the ocean, but we caught about around a dozen in a short period of time. 

On the way back to the marina, we pass through another onshore  harbor where a friend I used to teach with moors his sailboat. We saw him and some other people on it (2 more of my former co-worker friends), so we cruised over and tied up to chat for a little while.  In the process Miss Maddie hopped over onto his sailboat. She visited with everyone and then decided to take a nice long pee on his boat. How embarrassing. I guess a dog poop would have been worse.  (Good thing they were all dog people-smile).

At this point, it was time to go in, pull the boat out of the water and head home. I didn't need, nor want, any more adventures. 

This has taken me forever to write. Hop you enjoyed my day of boating adventures. And I apologize if this too too long for you to read also.  Smile.

Hope you have great T day and wonderful week ahead.