Full Foulies and a Ditch Bag

We awoke Monday morning and checked the weather report. Hmmmm, Sandy's projected track is a bit closer to us now. Hmmmm, and the wind forecast is now 30-50 mph with gusts to 65. For Neala, it was a no-brainer: "Every man for himself! I'm going to a hotel!" Grady and Jeff had to agree, so we packed our ditch bags (thanks for the bags, Bill Hertel), called a cab and headed to a Best Western on higher ground. On the way out, we were interviewed by the WBAL TV crew that was covering the storm from a bluff overlooking the marina. Not sure if we made the news, but Jeff thinks we were live at the time (our 15 minutes of fame!). Jeff worked as Neala and Grady watched WBAL keeping track of Sandy's progress as she approached the NJ coast. It was comforting to see an occasional live flash from our personal marina TV crew and we could at least see shots of Serenity in them.

 Not "abandoning ship" but...

In the morning we had breakfast with Ted and Shirl who had also decided to retreat from the storm's fury. As it turned out, Annapolis was in the SW quadrant of the storm and we saw very little of the havoc that Sandy brought to the rest of the East Coast. We were saddened by the damage we saw in New York, where we had been only a week ago, and in Atlantic City where we had passed during our night passage.

In Annapolis, the main concern was the storm surge that threatened to flood the downtown area. The bridge over Spa Creek was closed due to downtown flooding. Grady rented a car to get to the airport for a 3pm flight, because the shuttles were not reliable, and drove us all back to the boat about 10 am. Northern Lights, wet but in pristine conditions, was sitting where we had left her. We went aboard, powered up the heaters and spent the day chillin' as a dreary rain fell all day.

Northern Lights just as we left her and a fond bye bye to Grady!

Its all good!