Hamcation

I had planned to ride over to the Hamcation in Orlando with Paul, KM4MA, tomorrow, but with nasty weather forecast for the next couple of days, I probably won't. It's deceptively calm right now, but the winds should start to pick up later in the day, with rain and gusts up to around 25 knots forecast for Saturday and Sunday. They are also warning that the ICW will be rough, but haven't issued a small craft advisory or anything like that.

We're anchored in a wide section of the Indian River with plenty of fetch, so it can get rough with winds over 15 knots. At 25, I probably wouldn't want to get out in the dinghy unless I had too, and in any case would end up soaking wet even if it wasn't raining.

We moved a little further north the other day to get away from some boat anchoring a little too close, but are still over half a mile from the railroad causeway. The high winds are expected from the north, and since it was pretty bumpy here a few days ago with similar, albeit slightly lighter winds, we're going to re-anchor right up next to the causeway and get in it's lee.

Re-anchoring is a bit of a job since I have to pull the chain and anchor up by hand, but I don't mind it much. However, it's still much better than bouncing around for 48 hours. I suppose we could go into the marina, but at $50 a day, it starts to add up. And we might find ourselves stuck there longer than we wanted since I'm not comfortable singlehanding her in high winds in tight spaces like a marina.

It's just better to avoid those situations in the first place. Once things calm back down, we'll go in for diesel, water, and other supplies, and start heading south again.