Finding Moksha: Fleeting

Fall has pretty much fled this year in most of New England, and with that so have the tourists and holiday makers. The bay that is directly in front of the boat in Newport is now empty, an area that 2 months ago had upwards of 150 boats. Restaurants are now shutting up shop, and the once common tourist stand now appears to have gone the same way as the Dodo.

Cold is one way of describing here now, not in a measure of temperature, but more in the way you see a photo of a townscape in one of those random Russian States in the 80's. Almost desolate, vacant and with a heap of people crowding around a bin that they lit on fire.

Hurricane Sandy a few weeks ago got a lot of attention, yes it was 80knots for us, and a little sketchy at times too. But as it was a system born in the tropics and fuelled by the Gulf Stream, it did bring quite warm (15c instead of 5c) and humid conditions. Plus the 80knots only lasted 3 or 4 hours, and it was 60 knots for another 6 hours. All up it was back to normal programming by sun up.

Winter Storm Athena on the other hand came our way a week later, it being a nor'easter, brought snow to New York and much of the North East, a system that is fed by a land mass that got its name changed to make it sound not so cold (Greenland) is never a pleasant system to have around. We ended up having almost 3 days straight of 60knot winds, at a temperature that was often below 0c and never above 5c (that's before wind chill too!). For us on the boat it was a pretty rough little period, the stairs on the dock went in the water, we spent hours on the dock in the rain and ice fixing a power cable (on a dock that was literally falling apart, accessed to by climbing our dock lines), and the rest of the time making sure we weren't going to float away!

We had snow flurries falling at one stage, this is apparently snow that is not snowy enough to stay snow when it lands on the ground, instead it decides to turn into really miserable chilled water.

Enough of that, here is a trip we did in between storms to Cape Cod. Henry Thoreau (whoever that is?) once said about Cape Cod "A man may stand there and put all of America behind him".

With this weather in mind, I think I might go back there soon!