You haven't heard much from us lately. We are safely moored in Stuart, Florida. It has been an odd winter both weather wise and otherwise. Skipping the Bahamas this winter was always the plan. It turns out that we made a wise decision. Big weather in the Bahamas this year including a derecho that caused lots of damage made it a good year to skip. What is a derecho? The dictionary describes this weather phenomena:
derecho (/dəˈreɪtʃoʊ/, from Spanish: derecho [deˈɾetʃo], "straight") is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a land-based, fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms. Derechos can cause hurricane force winds, tornadoes, heavy rains, and flash floods.
This was an especially bad wind year in the Bahamas because a good portion of the big winds came from the west. Most of the popular anchorages are exposed to the west and a lot of boats ended up on the rocks, dragging anchor in the strong west winds.
We had some strong winds here, as well. Below is a picture our friends took of Freedom rocking and rolling during a wind storm.
I had my sewing machine out on the table and we heeled so much my heavy machine slid across the table!
Weather wasn't the only drama we experienced. Enjoying a nice calm, sunny day on the mooring and honey bees started showing up in the cockpit. I looked outside and suddenly there were thousands of them swarming around our boat. We got all the hatches closed but now felt trapped inside our boat, unsure what to do. The bees all landed on the blades of our wind generator which was off at the time. Ed decided to turn it on to see if that would shoo them away. Instead they just moved to the body of the wind gen.
We googled 'swarming bees' and came up with a local bee keeper and gave him a call. He told us that they were likely just passing through on their way to finding a new hive location. He felt sure that they would move on in 24 - 48 hours and if not he would come collect them. Sure enough. ....they were gone within 3 hours! Wow....that was quite a buzz.
derecho (/dəˈreɪtʃoʊ/, from Spanish: derecho [deˈɾetʃo], "straight") is a widespread, long-lived, straight-line wind storm that is associated with a land-based, fast-moving group of severe thunderstorms. Derechos can cause hurricane force winds, tornadoes, heavy rains, and flash floods.
This was an especially bad wind year in the Bahamas because a good portion of the big winds came from the west. Most of the popular anchorages are exposed to the west and a lot of boats ended up on the rocks, dragging anchor in the strong west winds.
We had some strong winds here, as well. Below is a picture our friends took of Freedom rocking and rolling during a wind storm.
I had my sewing machine out on the table and we heeled so much my heavy machine slid across the table!
Weather wasn't the only drama we experienced. Enjoying a nice calm, sunny day on the mooring and honey bees started showing up in the cockpit. I looked outside and suddenly there were thousands of them swarming around our boat. We got all the hatches closed but now felt trapped inside our boat, unsure what to do. The bees all landed on the blades of our wind generator which was off at the time. Ed decided to turn it on to see if that would shoo them away. Instead they just moved to the body of the wind gen.
We googled 'swarming bees' and came up with a local bee keeper and gave him a call. He told us that they were likely just passing through on their way to finding a new hive location. He felt sure that they would move on in 24 - 48 hours and if not he would come collect them. Sure enough. ....they were gone within 3 hours! Wow....that was quite a buzz.
