The wind blew hard for over two days but our anchor held well and we stayed in place. It was a stressful weekend with howling winds, a rocking and spinning boat, constant worrying, and poor sleep. Yesterday evening it finally started to get better. On the plus side, we didn't have it quite as bad as two of our neighbors who kept swinging towards each other at anchor. I think one of them had a full keel so was more affected by the currents in our anchorage. At one point the guy from the one boat rowed his dinghy over to the other boat and three of them were up on the bow of that boat messing with the anchor for about an hour. Not sure what they were doing as the situation was still similar afterwards. But all of their rowing and standing around was taking place in 30 knot winds and pouring rain--not fun!
We have a few battle scars. The bimini cloth was thrashing against one of the solar panel supports that is sort of rough aluminum and eventually it split itself on that edge. The bimini top also lost the flap that covers the window for looking up at the sail; this window is covered by a solar panel now so the flap is no longer necessary anyways. The port side long window cracked. I'm not sure exactly what caused this, probably just temperature changes and flexing over the years. There was evidently a lot of stress on the window as the crack immediately separated about 1/16". That will be costly and tedious to replace ($550 and 20-30 days to manufacture and ship, plus a full day to remove, prep, and install). A fender flew over the lifelines but was tied on so we didn't lose it. Also the sail cover and dodger minorly extended some rips that they already had.
Today we left around 10:00am and went 25 miles to Swansboro, NC. It was a pretty cold day and we planned the short day because of forecast scattered showers. They started 5 minutes after we anchored...great timing! On the way we drove past two ships with big booms sticking out of all four corners, and one of the ships had a net stuck between them. Anna said maybe they were for catching stuff so it didn't fall on the boat...I basically told her that was ridiculous. Then I looked up the name of one of them (GO Ms. Tree) and learned that it is for catching the fairings that are parts of rockets that SpaceX launches. So I was simultaneous ashamed of myself and amazed at the coolness of them.