Pre-Thanksgiving Storm

The wind howled through the mid-coast on Tuesday night and, though I had planned a day of baking prior to heading off to my parent's house for Thanksgiving, we woke to a day of boat work instead. We had checked the schooner and Rendezvous before going to bed and tossed and turned all night as we listened to the wind rattle the windows (sustained winds of 40 to 50 mph were clocked along the Maine coast, according to the National Weather Service, with some higher gusts). We lost power through-out the night and many were without power even into Thanksgiving Day.

At first light we drove to the shipyard to see how we had fared and found that a 43' lobster boat had run aground on the rocks by the railway. No one was around so we called Doug and Linda who own two-thirds of the shipyard and live just up the hill and they came down to see the damage. About a half-hour later you'd have thought there was a 4x4 truck meet at the shipyard. You couldn't drive through for all the trucks!
Prock Marine didn't take any time at all to come and pluck Provider off the rocks on the coming tide. Notice the plastic on the boat in the background...in the night it was thrashing about.And then the containment and clean-up begins. John and Jamie are shown here running a containment boom around the slick.
There was a lot of fuel and/or hydraulic fluid on the water. Some bait fish had spilled and washed ashore too and the seagulls were feasting on them.
Thankfully, the Provider seem to come into the cove without hitting the Evans. If the wind had been from a different direction, it could have been a totally different story. We have nightmares about it happening a different way where she runs into the Evans and sits there all night just pounding away. But, we were lucky. The storm caused some damage to the front section of our cover, our Christmas lights (that I was smart enough to put up on a warm day this month!) needed a little attention, one of the fenders between the Evans and the Heritage had popped, and the impeller on the bilge pump had sheared off. There were four boats aground in Rockland, two in Owls Head, and boats toppled off their stands in Camden so, all-in-all, we made out all right. And I was able to make a pumpkin pie and an apple pie that afternoon after taking care of boat stuff that morning!

We hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving!