Sandy Hook, NJ

Wind: NE 20-25 knots, gusting to 30

We’re stuck here, in lovely New Jersey, again today, and signs do not look promising for tomorrow. Last night, we woke up to feel the boat sailing on her anchor. She’d heel over to port as she sailed one way, then she’d get caught by the anchor, and sail back the other way. Just the wind in the rigging alone will do that, and it was freaky. I think it was the worst weather we’ve ever anchored in. The howling of the wind in the rigging was scaring us both—I don’t think Karl slept much at all.

We’d heard the weather report yesterday, and it had predicted gale warnings for offshore north of us, and there was a small craft advisory, but it didn’t really seem that bad yesterday. There was a lot of fog, and some drizzle, and even if we hadn’t had to do all of our town stuff, I don’t know if we would have sailed, but the same basic wind was forecast for today, so we thought we’d be able to leave. Now it looks like we’ll be here at least until Wednesday. Everyone ends up stuck in Sandy Hook, supposedly—I guess now we know why. It’s certainly not for the friendliness of the town folk.

I wanted to go back to that alleged internet café today and give them a piece of my mind. Maybe not my mind, really—my plan was to go first thing in the morning and stay all day, after ordering the cheapest thing on the menu. That’d teach them. As Karl said, though, “That’ll teach them, Melissa. Give them more money.” Still, I was very angry. Aren’t you supposed to drink coffee at a coffee shop? Isn’t that the whole point? I’m mainly frustrated that I didn’t get to post any pictures. Karl’s been taking some amazing sunset pictures. There’s not much else to take pictures of—sunsets and lighthouses.

Still, the advantage of staying tomorrow will be that I can go to the library and use the internet to my heart’s content. If we feel safe enough leaving the boat, which we didn’t today. So I made pizzas from the More With Less cookbook (thanks, Sonia!), did the dishes, which took about five hours, and now Karl’s rebuilding the macerator pump for our head, which has been stinking to high heaven. It’s stinking worse now, but I think that’s because he’s tearing it all apart. If he manages to fix it, I’m going to be in seventh heaven. I definitely understand the appeal of the bucket and chuck it. In fact, if we were to do this again, I’d tear out the head and replace it with a bucket. No one needs two sinks in a boat, and if you have a bucket, at least you can get away with throwing it away in the harbor. I did yoga the other morning, and let me tell you—it is not fun trying to do shavasana with your head resting next to a week’s worth of your own accumulated crap.