Yesterday we had to do some shopping and when we left the boat there was not so much as a breath of wind, the sky was an azure blue and the water was as smooth as glass...
A couple hours later, while we contemplated whether to buy a large box of Oreos or Famous Amos cookies, our cell phone rang.
The boat moored next to us was calling to tell us that a waterspout seemed to be forming less than a hundred feet away from us and that maybe we should know...
Being that we were in a store, and, at best, a half hour from our dinghy, this was something of a can't really do anything but pray to the PTB"s situation. So we got a play by play commentary of all hell breaking loose while we stood in a supermarket aisle powerless to do anything.
The next five minutes seemed to last forever...
The water spout formed between us and two other boats (So It Goes is just out of frame to the left in the picture). As we listened, we heard how one boat was enveloped and then that it appeared that one boat had come loose from its mooring (luckily it did not). The ensuing mayhem had all of the boats in touch with the spout in unnatural positions to each other. The spout then went through the anchorage nearly causing a collision between two boats as they were both sucked towards each other then it continued to the launching ramp and dissipated as it came into contact with the land...
"So It Goes" did not sustain any damage nor did anyone else in the anchorage but it was a very close thing and it could have been very ugly. After we returned I dived on my ground tackle to find that our bow was nearly on top of the anchor and that our chain was laid out in two nearly perfect circles around it... Pretty impressive considering I have nearly 150' of chain out.
Our cats (Buffy and Willow) were a little shell shocked having been inside while "So It Goes" did, or so I'm told, a fairly convincing imitation of a dradle. Both Buffy and Willow appear to believe this is not what they signed up for and can we spell c-o-m-p-e-n-s-a-t-i-o-n? It appears that many cat treats and string time is the order of the day.
Listening to a Buffet clone
So it goes...
