Monday, June 19, 2017

The storm's a'comin'

And we're a'runnin'

Invest 92L is the system we are watching. Invest is short for Investigation and it designated a weather feature that the Hurricane Center is watching. The numbers run from 90 to 99 and then start again. The L stands for atLantic.

92L is not a named storm but could develop into one and it is headed to Grenada.

The colors on the chart above for Tuesday are new colors to us. The highest number is 61 knots.  Pretty as it is, it is a color I would rather not see!


The irony of this is that we, and many others, are in Grenada because it is out of the "hurricane box ", and yet this is where the storm is headed.


Grenada is at the bottom of the Caribbean arc, right in the path of the potential storm.

We left Grenada yesterday and headed north. Our son Rivers and his wife Laura have joined us after their journey in Southeast Asia. The four of us are traveling to what we hope is a safer location, the marina in Canouan where we stayed in April. The first day we went from the southern coast of Grenada, up to Carriacou, an island north of the island of Grenada , and still a part of the country of Grenada. It was a journey of 30 miles, and it took us 8.5 hours to complete. I remarked to Laura that this was the slowest journey we had made yet. The wind was directly on our nose and we were only able to go at about 3.3 knots. That translates to 3.7 mph. Pretty slow going! We were quite pleased to stop for the day and enjoyed a nice swim upon our arrival. 

This morning we headed to Customs to check out of Grenada and ran into the nicest, funniest Customs official yet. He started out by telling us that his job was to stress us out and make our lives miserable. Then began to tell us his family history and about his Grandfather who had 100 children. Apparently  most of the property in Tyrrell Bay is owned by his family, aunts, uncles or first cousins. The checkout procedure was quick and painless. At the end he asked us if he had sufficiently stressed us, and we assured him that he had.  

Our journey today took us to the Marina. Our speed today made yesterday's trip feel positively speedy. Again, the wind was right in our faces with gusts as high as 29 knots and at one point our speed dropped under 2 knots. Watching the islands we were passing was painful, our progress was so slow. We ran into squalls, rain pelting down, wind in our face. Bob gets karma points once again for volunteering to steer while the squalls were upon us.

But now we are in the marina. The showers are wonderful, the Wifi is good and it is not raining. Life is good.

We are tied up and there is a plan in case the storm heads our way. We feel safe. It is nice to be here where we would have help if needed, rather than everyone fending for themselves.

The storm is due tomorrow night. Now that Rhapsody is secure I am much more at ease about the upcoming winds.

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