We had some kind of crazy microburst or something come through. I thought it was funny when the girls’ schoolbooks slid off the dining table. When I got up and looked out the light and saw the surface of the water rather the boat in the next slip I thought something must really be going on. I opened the companionway and saw the boats across the fairway heeled over under bare poles like it was a brisk day of sailing.

I kinda freaked out when I looked to my right and saw the bow of the Gulfstar that’s normally ten feet away 6 inches from Lark’s gunwale. She’d broken her windward piling clean off! We got some extra fenders over that gunwale and I boarded the Gulfstar directly from Lark’s cockpit. The skipper on the next boat windward of the Gulfstar dropped a spare dock line over his leeward piling and heaved it to me and I secured the Gulfstar in its normal position. I sure hope that piling holds.

Definitely makes you think twice about weathering a tropical system in a marina…