Now that TD 8 has come and gone we can look at it as a drill.  A chance to load up flashlights with new batteries, locate the candles, top up the gas tank and so forth.

Those of us who mess about in boats got a chance to dig out the extra dock lines and fenders.  And although TD 8 was, fortunately, a non-event, it’s not yet time to put away those extra precautions.

If the weather man is right (and who else can be wrong 80% of the time and still have a job?) we can expect a direct visit from Tropical Storm Hermine, the artist formerly known as TD 9 (a.k.a. 99L), early Saturday morning.  In fact, as the forecast now stands, we can expect the eye of the storm to cross right over us. The bad news here is that the strongest winds will most likely hit us from more than one direction. The good news?

That it’s not supposed to intensify into a hurricane. Sound familiar? Maybe you were here in August, 2004.

My favorite description of sailing through the eye of a storm is from “A Nautical Extravagance” by Wallace Irwin:

“It blew the tars right off of the spars and the spars right off of the mast!

Sails and pails and anchors and nails went by in the wings of the blast!

The galley shook as it blew the cook straight out through the porthole glim

And the kettle and can and the pot and the pan went clattering after him! 

It blew the fire from our gallant stove and the coal from our gallant bin

And whistled apace past the captain’s face and blew all the beard off his chin!

‘Wizzle me dead!’ the captain said and the words blew out of his mouth,

‘We’re lost I fear if the wind don’t veer and blow a while from the south!’

Well, ‘wizzle me dead’ no sooner he’d said them words that blew from his mouth

Than the wind switched round with a hurricane sound and it blew straight in from the south!

We opened our eyes with a wild surprise and never a word to say

For in making her tack, the wind blew back all the things she’d blowed away!

It blew the tars back onto the spars and the spars back onto the mast!

Back came the sails, the pails and the nails which into the ship stuck fast!

Before we could look, it blew our cook straight into the galley coop

And the pot landed back on the stove without even spilling the soup!

It blew the fire back into the stove where it burnt in its proper place

And we all of us cheered when it blew the beard back onto the captain’s face!”

But wait!  Even as I was writing this, the National Weather Service was revising the proposed track of TS Hermine farther inland. Could Raleigh have more to fear from this system than the Outer Banks? Stay tuned!