Waiting for Irene

The worst part of course is the waiting.  With Ed's help I took down the main this afternoon so I now have bare poles.  The jib you may remember was torn on my approach to New Bern so the forestay has been empty for a while.  It is kind of funny that my new jib and main will arrive in the next day or two.  As David said, just in time to have them blown out by Irene.

I had planned to go to Chicago and Milwaukee to visit my sons and have some oral sugery done this Friday.  I decided to cancel the trip.  It turned out to be quite the joke.  I suggested to US Airways that they cut me a break since I was not able to travel due to the weather.  The nice lady talked to her supervisor but no such luck.  Then I rescheded the flight.  It turned out that with all the the service fees and penalities it was cheaper to walk away from the ticket then to pay the fees to rebook the flight.  Nice.  The airlines have really gotten to be a royal pain in the neck.  The nice part is that the reservation agent figured out it was cheaper to book a new ticket than modify the old one.  I am sure that if they play the tape she will get fired.  Plus a new one for me, she waived the $25 fee for actually talking to a person to book my flight since I was trying to rebook an old flight.  That was nice.  I am sure that I will be paying for air in the cabin to breathe within the year.

So now we watch and wait.  Each storm track moves slightly East.  This morning it was directly over the marina, now it is about 30 miles to the east of New Bern.  Hopefully it will continue to push out to sea.  I gather they are already evacuating the Outer Banks.

Keep safe.