Oh, come on Irene
I swear on my knees
At this moment
You mean everything to me.
Does anyone else think of this song when they read about the hurricane that is about to blast the east coast? Or is it just me?
Maybe it’s because she does mean everything thing to me.
Fall. Fall is a dangerous time of year according to Guido. (For those of you readers not in Alaska, August is very much considered fall). Fall is dangerous because you are just coming off the huge surf of energy, adrenaline, high emotions, and downright craziness of fishing.
For me, I’ve been working my butt off since April. Actually since February. That’s when I started gearing up to come over here to Cordova from Anchorage. Getting rid of things I don’t need, cleaning and renting out my condo, packing, buying and fixing up, then selling and buying another camper to live in (see blog post: http://bit.ly/qkQfQp), provisioning for the 5 months I’ll be here, etc. On arrival to Cordova, I hit the ground running. Vince and I got the camper set up then I started work. Between crewing on a gillnetter and mending gear, I was putting in over 100 hours a week those first few months. Now that things have (finally) slowed down, I have a chance to think about my fall plans. After coming off all these pent up emotions from the summer, one might wonder if it’s really a good time to be making plans? Hence the danger.
Well, probably not. But I did anyway. My plan of fleeing to nice weather is the only thing keeping me going during this dreary 3 week stretch of 53 degree temperatures and rain. There are as follows.
Come September 9-11 I’ll be performing at the Kenai Fisher Poets Gathering in Kenai, AK. After that I’m back in Cordova for a few weeks to pack up, etc. Then I’m arranging my escape late September. The plan is to pack up the cat and drive down the ALCAN highway to Ohio, hitting hot springs along the way of the 4000 mile journey. I’ll visit the family in Ohio, meet up with Vince and drive south to his beautiful new sail boat the Flight Plan, a Seawind 1000.
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| A Seawind 1000 catamaran |
She's a 33’ cat that we plan on sailing south to Florida and the Bahamas for the winter. It is currently on dry dock in a historically safe place that is supposed to be north of the hurricane zone, in North Carolina. Yes, North Carolina! Right in the path of Irene. The boat is up river somewhere some 20 miles from the coast. Hope hope hope hopefully, it will survive this weekend. Hopefully everything and everybody survives this weekend.
I see that Irene is losing speed, even if ever so slightly. We’ve done what we can, took the sails off, all the rigging we could. Now we just wait and wish for the best.
Wish us luck.
