Bomb Cyclone Addendum

Promise, this will be quick.

I am happy to report that, as we headed off to supper last evening, we found our great blue heron from the night before happily hunting in the shallows at the head of the marina. he appeared no worse for his bomb cyclone wear and, sitting on a pier, he greeted us again when we returned later in the evening. We chose not to disturb him to take his portrait.

However, in the somewhat amazing category, we observed not one, not two, but eleven black-crowned night herons as we walked the length of the dock to reach Katahdin.

Despite the dark, I captured pictures of several without causing them to startle and fly. We enjoyed the walk out the dock immensely despite the cold.

Speaking of the cold, Florida's entire electrical grid was on the edge last night and the quality of power reaching the boat dropped as low as 100 volts per line. This was not enough to power the extra heaters that we place in the engine room and up towards the bow and eventually wouldn't even run our reverse cycle heat exchangers. We started the generator which at least powered all three of our r/c heaters and ran it until the wee hours of the morning. The generator's own heat kept the engine room warm and we left one of the master berth floor hatches cracked open in the hopes that that would provide enough heat to keep the anchor wash down line that goes forward from freezing. Being old folks, we worried about stepping into the crack on one of our nightly missions. We left a floor light on and placed the day's used underwear and a pocket book in front of it as a double reminder. We didn't fall through and the pipes did not freeze!