Waiting for Ida

It is about 5 p.m. and Ida is due to make landfall around midnight here in Mobile. Winds are picking up but we seem to be well secured. We plan to stay up late because the high tide is due shortly after Ida makes landfall and that means we'll have to check the lines carefully and adjust to compensate for the rising tide. We're happy of course that Ida has been downgraded from hurricane to tropical storm, but we're also somewhat miffed that up until yesterday the meteorologists were all predicting that it would peter out in the gulf and turn east before getting close to Mobile.... oh well. There isn't much of anywhere we could have gone. Most folks at the marina are riding it out here but a few left early this morning for the Tenn-Tom.

Other than the hurricane things have been going smoothly and we were basically just waiting on Patrick's arrival (he was due in tomorrow but he has postponed for a few days due to the weather). We got the head gasket on the generator repaired and we re-insulated its case. I've been trying to finish up the sewing projects and am almost done. Last weekend we rented a car and drove down to Pensacola Beach. Had a fabulous seafood lunch and then went to an isolated stretch of the beach to let Max play off-leash. The beach east of Mobile is gorgeous - turquoise water and white sugar sand. Max loved rolling the the sand and swimming in the water. Unfortunately, he consumed to much of both water and sand so threw up in the car several times on the way back to the marina. We're hoping he will eventually make the connection between drinking salt water and getting sick to his stomach, but it looks like it will take several experiences.

We'll write tomorrow with an update on what happened with the storm.