It's Official

(NOAA photo, 3:15 p.m. today)

Now we'll see if the ship's still there when we get back.

[moment of silence for the Flora-Bama]

I was thinking: One nice thing about being at that dock, at least, is that the ship isn't as vulnerable to losing power if the lines start coming down in the area. We're quite safe as far as that goes. Of course, before we left, we threw the breaker to the ship's massive shore supply cable, as a safety precaution, and dragged it up out of the engine room to coil it on the dock. (A four-person operation -- not bad, since it took six engineers to muscle it down there.) So the ship is completely dark right now -- we pulled the plug on the 24-volt emergency system too -- for the first time since that little problem we had in the DR in 2002. But anyway, once we get back and get the cable reconnected, things should be fine. In order for the ship to lose power, a pretty big chunk of something or other would have to smash into the big electrical substation right next door to us. You know, the one just on the other side of our crumbling warehouse. Right by where all those huge thirty-foot sections of old sheet steel are dangling by a single rusty bolt apiece. Yeah, that one.