– or was it just The Great Wind accompanied by Exceptionally Heavy Rain?

We have just had 48 hours of thunder and lightning, winds gusting up to 45 knots (well that’s when our high wind alarm is triggered and that kept going off all night), and Exceptionally Heavy Rain.

It was exciting (well it would have been had I not slept and had not been trying to finish off some work before Christmas…). We were surrounded by boats crashing into pontoons and anchors smashing into electric boxes. Lots of boats were damaged – mainly because there is so little bad weather out here that they are tied up (very badly) with bits of ‘string’. Luckily, CAPE’s tying up string is 28 mm octoply (breaking strain 12 tonnes), because that was what we needed when we acted as the windbreak for the whole marina in Aberystwyth (many was the night in Aber when we slept with lee cloths up at a 10 degree heel – on our berth in the marina).

Anyway, back to The Great Storm. One particularly exciting moment occurred when the cleats holding one large (expensive) motor boat to an outer pontoon broke off and set it adrift – luckily David and a couple of other boatie types were able to get on to it, secure it and hold it until its keepers arrived to take it to a safer berth. (Captain Lilo to the rescue…!)

The rain was exceptional – even better than the Welsh stuff. At least 6 inches of rain fell last night alone – our dinghies nearly sank with volume of water (you should know that we are a 2-dinghy family), and a few others were partially submerged by the morning, their outboards just peeping above the water. We often hear water making its way down the inside of the mast, getting in via the holes at the top that let the bits of rope out. The first night of the storm the rain was so voluminous that water made its way down the outside of the mast that is inside the boat (work that one out if you can). Our fairy lights (lovingly transported all the way from Wales) blew up and our precious antique mast covering got soaked. We dried out the mast covering (which left dubious black stains on Bryn’s 3D rendering of a bonito for Art), bought a new set of lights and rigged the whole lot up again. The next night the Exceptionally Heavy Rain did its thing again, so David was up at 3 am taking down the fairy lights and mast covering. Today he put them all back up again. At least now he can dismantle the lot with his eyes shut and without disturbing my beauty sleep.

The wind and rain have now abated. Injured and abandoned fenders have collected in one corner of the marina, along with dead tyres, trees, plastic bags and bottles – and lumps of polystyrene (where do the lumps of polystyrene come from?). We had ordered a ‘boom bimini’ – a smart, dark blue vinyl ‘tent’ that we stretch over the boom and tie onto the toe rail (a metal rail that runs around the edge of the boat at deck level) – and this has now arrived. As we are now protected, the bad weather should subside.

TENGY, DRY WHITE, MBOLO and ONS JOOL – our mates suffering the weather in the UK – are all fine – thank goodness!

Unfortunately, we were so preoccupied with reinserting fenders, staying dry and avoiding crashing anchors, we forgot to get any piccies of events!