Blown Away

Mark Pillsbury

To shrink or not to shrink? The deck gets pretty snowy when you don't.

A Christmas storm that buried much of the nation's midsection brought a post Xmas doozy of a dumping to New England. Sitting 100 miles north of our boat, in a warm house by a woodstove, I couldn't but help sweat the forecast that called for a full-on blizzard by evening. Oh, yes, the two feet of snow that fell over night in Boston and that had to be shoveled before quickly falling temperatures turned plow banks into concrete walls had me sweating, too.

And a blizzard it was. Winds in Newport blew a sustained 50 knots, exploding the expanse of shrink-wrap that covered a large power boat that sits on the outer dock of our marina.

I arrived in the wake of the storm to find all secure aboard our Jackalope - though the PVC frame over the boat had been adjusted somewhat - and amazingly, saw little damage elsewhere around the docks. Below, oil from what I'd guess was a well-shaken lamp glistened on the nav station, but otherwise, not a single spice bottle had been overturned. Whew!

Cold, northwest winds finally blew themselves out by late in the evening of the 28th, and by Wednesday morning, well, the sun and ice melt had Newport headed into a thaw.