Tired Of Waiting

      "If you're waiting on me you're wasting time".  This is something I have told Sharon on a few occasions.  I'm always ready.  For the last 5 days I have been waiting on a woman, not Sharon but Sandy.  For the last 5 days we have been wasting time in a marina in West Palm Beach, Florida.  It all started last Saturday or Sunday when a yet to be named unorganized cluster of storm cells reared their ugly heads into a tropical depression well south of Jamaica.  At this point in time we were moving south on the ICW through Florida.  On Monday, as the predictions started leaning on a northerly track, we called the marina that we had previously booked for Wednesday night for other reasons, plan A.  The marina said they had a slip for us if we decided to come in on Tuesday.  Our original plan, Plan A, was to stay at the marina Wednesday night, go to the U.S. Customs & Immigrations Office on Thursday morning for our Local Boaters Option (LBO) interview and leave late Thursday morning for points south, Miami.  The LBO is a program designed to reduce the amount of hoops we, as boaters, experience when we return to the U.S. from foreign waters.  More on that next Spring when we return from the Bahamas; back to Plan B.  Late Tuesday afternoon we arrived at the marina, after the office staff had left but a few dock workers stayed on to catch our lines.  On Wednesday, Sharon went to the office to do an official check in when she was informed that if the winds from the storm exceeded 45 MPH sustained, the marina GM would shut down the marina and all boats would have to leave.  Now think about that decision, the storm is approaching, the winds would be at 45 MPH sustained, probably gusting to 60 and I would have to leave the marina when the GM orders us out.  In your dreams!  Fortunately for the GM, the winds never reached 45 sustained or I would have had to break the GM's little stone cold heart and stay nicely tied up to a rock solid concrete dock.  Friday was a day mainly spent in the pilothouse watching the events of the storm unfold around us.  One boat broke free from its mooring and drifted towards the marina but was snagged by a anchor line that the owner of a large catamaran had deployed to keep his boat from pounding the dock because of the northerly winds.  That was the highlight of the day as the owner of the drifting boat and the marina's dockmaster went diving to free the boat from the anchor line.  The boat was freed from the anchor line and was never seen again.   Rain squall after rain squall came through the area, the winds reached 40 MPH sustained with gust to 55 MPH. The eye of the storm passed 190 miles to the east of us on Friday.  Today, Saturday, Hurricane Sandy is on her way north, but I find myself still having to wait as her winds continue to buffer us from the west.  This is our third hurricane while on the boat.  There was Hurricane Earl in 2010, Hurricane Irene in 2011 and now, Hurricane Sandy in 2012.  For Hurricane Irene we were on the hook and the other two hurricanes were rode out in marinas.

     The eye of Hurricane Sandy passed just to the south and east of our cruising grounds in the Bahamas, the Exumas.  We did hear from Frank and Peg, who have a home at our favorite Bahamian anchorage,  They are doing well and everybody is okay.  They did experience 105 MPH winds and their home was not damaged.  Now, if we can get rid of Sandy I'm ready to get back on track.  I'm tired of waiting.