Roseanne Roseannadanna & Tropical Storms

As Roseanne Roseannadanna would say,

"Well, it just goes to show you, it's always something. If it ain't one thing, it's another".

Well, here's one thing...

Invest 98L - Sunday, 18 Sept 2011, 2pm models

And another!

Invest 99L - Sunday, 18 Sept 2011, 2pm models

Saw these this afternoon and I thought I was gonna be sick. So I says to them, "Hey Weather Guys, what are ya tryin' to do, make me sick?".

Oh, Gilda... those were the days! Miss your humor...

So it goes...

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Tropical Storm Maria... Bye!

Well, TS Maria was certainly a challenge for those weather folks and quite frustrating for those of us in her projected path.

At various times they had her going below us, just to the west, over to the east by St Martin, even more so to the east missing all of the islands... and, of course, right on top of us passing over St Croix.  Prediction of windspeeds up to 70MPH with it becoming a hurricane on the other side of Puerto Rico and, my favorite, the forecast where she was to fizzle out and possibly be downgraded to a lowly tropical WAVE... not even a TD :)

This didn't happen.  She stayed a tropical storm but we were pretty much unaffected. We've had a few non-TS days like this over the summer where you have some swell and a bit of wind. My type of storm... a non-event! We appreciate it, Maria.

From Wunderground.com
Sunday, 11 September 2011, 09:14am AST

We made our storm preparations and don't mind that it was "for nothing".  Not so... We got provisions, water, fuel, charged up the 48V battery bank, straightened up the boat, threw things away, etc... Not a bad thing at all.

The bad part about preparing for a storm is seeing that your neighboring boats are once again doing nothing. One guy, who we'll call "Homer" called us at 5pm the evening before the storm is to hit to say he'll be out at about 6pm to sort out his mooring and can we give him a ride to his boat. Leaving it a bit late, aren't you? He said he didn't come out the day before because he didn't feel like it. We told him that we were busy laying out another anchor for OUR boat but we'd help him tomorrow after we finished our preparations. He laughed and implied that that was too late (is that MY fault or PROBLEM???). I just said we're busy, bye, and hung up.

I could rant on about this but I will refrain.  Bob has a bit about it in yesterday's Boat Bits. I will add that the second anchor that was deployed for his boat (Homer stood on deck while Bob did the work) was a lightweight Bruce that Homer only paid out a total of about 35 feet of chain (15 foot depth + 4 feet to bow roller = how much chain on the bottom?). Chain does no good on the boat, as we thought everyone knows, but...

Fortunately the storm gave us a pass.  Bob has definitely earned some good Karma points helping this guy, even though his real motive was that it was helping us.

No more ranting...

Bob has made some lovely Sunday morning blueberry waffles. It is a nice day. Life is good :)

So It Goes !

Tropical Storm Maria... No need to stop by

It looks like Tropical Storm Maria has not turned northwards as early as they thought it would.

Je n'aime pas the new projected path... Right over us!

Stormpulse, Sept 8, 2011, 11am

Hopefully, she'll continue to head west and give us a wide pass when she does get around to hanging a right.

2pm update... I like the degenerating into a tropical wave part... after that ???

So it goes...

Tropical Storm Hurricane Irene & TD 12

Well, Tropical Storm / Hurricane Irene is now past but we now have Tropical Depression 12 to keep an eye on.

THEY say it will pass a couple hundred miles to the northeast of us but it is still far, far away and these things seem to come and go as they choose.

We walked up to do some grocery shopping at Pueblo on Saturday so we went to MacDonalds for lunch.  The TV was set to a popular news channel and the talking head was doing a 30-second interview with a couple who were going to stay at their home in NC during Irene. The interviewer told the couple that over 200,000 people were going to be without electricity and asked how would they survive. She said that restaurants would be closed (OMG, how does this person live?). The happy couple responded that they had stocked up on non-perishible goods and have a generator so it wouldn't be a problem.

I was also surprised the other day when I read an article on Lifehacker which reported that you do not have to, and it is better NOT to, store your bread in the refrigerator.  Doesn't everyone know that??? 

So it goes...

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Friday again! Storm free and wireless, too

Can't believe it's Friday. It's been difficult getting a handle on what day it is due to focussing on Tropical Storm Emily which made the beginning of the week feel like a weekend to me.

Fortunately, Tropical Storm Emily was not a threat to us in the Lesser Antilles and passed about 150 miles to the south of us. According to wunderground.com, we had a maximum wind speed of 28MPH and a maximum gust of 41MPH. It was a little bit bouncy here, but no worse than some days.

I'm NOT complaining! Hoping that Emily will be the only storm that happens in our neck of the woods this summer.  Could be... Look at 2006...

Tropical Storms, 2006 (click image to enlarge)

So, while dealing with T.S. Emily I had some time to play with the new Alfa R36 AP/Router which works with our Engenius bridge (ethernet) and our Alfa AWUS036H (1000mW USB Wifi Adapter).

FIRST THING TO DO:  Download the latest firmware for the Alfa R36 here:

http://www.alfa.com.tw/in/front/bin/ptlist.phtml?Category=105417

and install it. It is very easy to do. I did not know this had to be done and experienced many problems which now appear to have been solved.

We are currently using the R36 with our Engenius bridge as our hotspot is linked to its MAC address. I'll have to call our ISP before I can use the USB WiFi Adapter as they will have to change the MAC address to that particular unit.

So, another change that I had to make to my router settings was to configure it for the Bridge because the default had it set up for the USB adapter. This is what was probably causing another problem we were having.

It would have helped to have a "Quick Start" & full User Manual. They probably have some instructions on the mini CD that came with the unit but I cannot use it in my MacBook as it will get stuck.  Believe me, don't try this at home :)

Get your most current Alfa drivers here:

http://www.alfa.com.tw/in/front/bin/ptlist.phtml?Category=105397

* Info as of August 2011: AWUS036H does NOT support Mac OS 10.6.7 and later versions.

Get your Alfa user manuals here:

http://www.alfa.com.tw/in/front/bin/ptlist.phtml?Category=105415

I'm enjoying reading my R36's configuration file and seeing how it is affected by changing various settings. Yes, I'm a bit of a geek.  I miss being a programmer (back in the good old days when file size and concise, compact coding was important) but I do NOT miss the bureaucracy and associated political stupidity of working for an organization.

It is so wonderful not to be tethered down by our old router's ethernet connections. Everytime the internet comes to a standstill I reach to make sure the cable hasn't come out yet once again, but it has... we are wireless now!

We have to do some laundry this morning and then it's back to working on the mast. Get that momentum going again. It's not too rolly in the anchorage right now and it appears that we will have several clear & sunny days.

By the way, Bob has an excellent clip from the film "Used Cars" on his BoatBits blog post today. It made me laugh and you might enjoy it, too! There's also some good info about rigging.

JUST IN:  I just received an email for what's happening in Carcassonne (canal du midi, Languedoc-Roussillon, south of France) this week:

Eddy Mitchell is performing in Carcassonne TONIGHT at 9:30pm... If we had sailed to France this summer, we'd probably be there :)

Eddy Mitchell est de retour. Du rock au grand écran, de la country aux salles obscures, du blues aux dernières séances, quarante ans d'une vie dédiée à ses passions qu'il a réuni dans cette tournée magistrale. Pour ce nouveau spectacle, conçu comme une dernière séance, Eddy Mitchell choisira dans son répertoire les meilleurs crus de ces quarante dernières années pour accompagner un menu copieux, où le rock des pionniers ouvrira l'appétit avant de laisser la place à la puissance d'un orchestre big band qui fait alors que notre crooner se plait à mettre naturellement un tigre dans son moteur.
M.Eddy sur scène pour une dernière séance...un événement à ne pas manquer !
eddymitchell.artistes.universalmusic.fr

We used to love his "What-A-Burger" fastfood restaurant commercials that played in the cinemas.

I don't remember him as being that young... What happened???

So It's Going...

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Christmas Winds?

Invest 95??? What the frell???

This is too depressing for me... Please look at BoatBits for more info.

I'd rather be planning the party for the cats tomorrow and have visions of sugar plums :)

NOAA 2010 Hurricane season video

This is a cool video put together by NOAA...



Check out their YouTube channel

Wonder where we will be next summer...

Tropical Storm Gaston et nous UPDATE

YIPPEE !!!!! We just checked NOAA's 5pm update for TS Gaston and their Public Advisory #6 says...

GASTON BECOMES A REMNANT LOW OVER THE EAST-CENTRAL TROPICAL ATLANTIC... THIS IS THE LAST PUBLIC ADVISORY ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER ON GASTON UNLESS REGENERATION OCCURS.

This is wonderful news...

We did a big shop today but that we needed to anyways. Never hurts to have an extra sack of cat food or a big bag of Snickers :)

Tropical Storm Gaston et nous

Wonderful... TS Gaston is approximately 1790 miles away from St Croix. Too far for accurate predictions but I want to know NOW.

This is the 5am Stormpulse.com forecast for Gaston.

I still like the orange one the best... Come on, ORANGE! yeah!!!

The ditzy lady on the radio yesterday told everyone that 2 of the models for Fiona had the track circling back so we might get hit twice (never came close to us and there were no curlicues on the models we saw). Today she was going on about Gaston and how there were so many tracks focussing on St Croix & St Thomas. I think she would like to be a Fox News reporter and just wants to sound important regardless of facts that just get in the way :)

We didn't make it to the store yesterday as we had water in the outboard's fuel tank. That took a bit of time to sort out but it's done.  It's something that just kind of normally accumulates but we had lots of water in the dinghy from Hurricane Earl's rain which probably added to it.

Last night we were invited to dinner by our neighbor on the next mooring over. He's not a liveaboard and we finally met because of Hurricane Earl.  That was a good thing because now we have each other's phone numbers and email addresses so we can communicate in case of a problem with the boats.  We went to Angry Nate's on the Christiansted Boardwalk and had their Wendesday night Prime Rib special. The food was great (salad or New England clam chowder, big steak that was actually rare, baked potato with all the trimmings, perfectly cooked crisp green beans with almonds, and a fruit cobbler for $22) and so was the service!  The waitress started off by bringing us water glasses... how unusual. She stopped by several times to see how we were doing, plus she replenished our water and ice teas before the levels hit the bottom. This might seem like a small thing to you, but I haven't had this type of service in many, many years. We've had dinner there twice and both times were excellent.

We are going shopping today (everything willing) and do a bit of a megashop.  This is a 3-day weekend before a potential storm, so we have to get food, water, gas, and hit the ATM before the machine's money runs out...  I'd love (love is not the right word)... I could really do with hitting the laundromat but it's such a drag.

The amount of rain we had yesterday was amazing.  I'm looking forward to making a rain catcher but that has to wait until other things are in place.

So It Goes...

Tropical Storm Fiona - St Croix US Virgin Islands

Tropical Storm Fiona is about 200 miles to the northeast of St Croix.  She has passed us by but we just had about an hour of rain.  Some of it was pretty hard, too.  Bob & I went for a swim while it was raining. It was very nice.

Now we see that we now have Tropical Depression #9.  Whoopee.

It has quite a wide swath for its cone of death.  Here is the current (11am) forecast from the Stormpulse website.

Click image to enlarge

I put on the Forecast Models option.  I prefer the orange one. It shows that it is currently 1966 (that was a good year) miles from St Croix. It's still early days for TD9 so we'll just patiently wait and see what happens.

Look at the Hurricane Weather Widget over in the right hand column... You might have to scroll down a bit or maybe up a tad... It is very colorful right now with all of the various storm paths. 

So It Goes...