9/6/99 | Hanging out in Hampton

the storm that would not die

So much for our "quick stop" in Hampton. With Hurricane Dennis drifting back and forth along the coast, there was no way we were going to leave our safe harbor, so we just shrugged our shoulders and settled in for the duration. Fortunately, the Hampton city marina is a pleasant place, and the dockmaster, Ian, is a great guy. They have lots of extra phone lines in the office for cruisers' laptops, so afternoons would find two or three of us there along with the marina staff, all plugged in and trading URLs and weather stories.

We'd moved to the marina on Wednesday morning, and that afternoon Dennis had stopped drifting northeast and had started moving back to the west. The next day it moved almost directly south several hundred miles, and by Friday afternoon it had begun heading northwest. While a group of us checked the NOAA sites for storm track forecasts, Ken, who works at the marina, grumbled, "They should have given this hurricane a female name. It can't make up its mind where it wants to hit -- typical woman!"

"On the contrary," I responded, "the male name is perfect. This storm would have hit the coast last week if it had only been willing to stop and ask for directions!"

Saturday it rained all day, and the winds picked up as Dennis, now a "mere" tropical storm, finally made for the coast in earnest. We stayed on board, doing minor boat projects, reading, playing computer games, and listening to the weather radio. We didn't need the radio, though, to tell us the storm was approaching. It rained buckets on us, reminding us of all our leaks (there aren't many, but alas there are a few), and nicely cleaning the accumulated salt spray from the decks. Our poor dinghy looked like a swimming pool. As the wind built, we dared the rain to check our docklines for chafe, but everything looked nice and secure.

The winds were pretty fierce, even in our fairly protected spot. There were several reports of tornadoes being spotted in the area, and one touched down only a couple of miles from us. Nobody was badly injured, but six apartment buildings were destroyed, leaving around 1000 people homeless. The next day's newspaper carried photos of upside-down cars and roofs with trees in the middle of them.

In addition to wrecking houses and cars, at least one boat was also eaten by Dennis. Apparently, a singlehanded sailor was on his way from Maine to Florida and somehow got caught unawares by the storm. (He must have been really tired not to have been listening to the weather radio, because the forecasts had been dire for the entire previous week.) He tried to enter the Chesapeake at Cape Charles (where we had come in as well), but the waves were too big. The Coast Guard had been on the radio with him for a while when he finally opted to abandon ship and get rescued. His unmanned sailboat washed into the Virginia Beach pier and was pounded by the waves under the pier and into the sand.

After the storm finally decided to make landfall, things improved pretty quickly. We actually had blue skies peeking out occasionally from between the clouds today, the wind is a mere fresh breeze, and I've heard rumors that the waves are down to "only" five feet or so.

labor day

We've been taking advantage of our enforced stop here to catch up with some boat work. One project that Britt finally got to was beginning the conversion of the vanity in the forward stateroom into a computer desk. Now we have our CD-RW and Jaz drives mounted under a shelf and out of the way, there's room for all our disks and manuals, and the power bricks and cords are neatly organized.

In the meantime, I have been polishing the stanchions and pulpit rails. So-called stainless steel doesn't have a chance when it's constantly splashed with seawater. In the four months since the last time we cleaned the stainless steel, the little rust spots have reappeared and grown into big ones. The constant rain has been washing the salt spray from most of the deck, but we still need to wash out the cockpit and hose off the clear vinyl window at the front of the cockpit dodger.

Everything on the boat needs airing out, too, now that the sun is finally drying things out. Some of our cushions were a little moist from the few leaks which have been going nonstop for the last week. Two wicker baskets which we use to store things have grown moldy from the constant high humidity; a good soaking in a bleach solution cleaned them up. A trip to the laundromat to clean our clothes, a trip to the grocery store to stock our shelves, and now we're pretty much good to go.

next steps

We'd like to get to Yorktown, which isn't too far away; ever since Philadelphia, we've been on a history kick. We've also heard great things about Mobjack Bay, and the Deltaville area, and we've been told not to miss Onancock on the eastern shore. Unfortunately, we have to be back in Annapolis in two weeks. Fortunately, we'll be coming back this way when we start making our way to Florida in October, so we'll be able to visit all the places we miss this go-round.