Was it something we said? Something we did?
Dave and I spent last Saturday night on board. Waking up Sunday morning, in my kinda-asleep-kinda-awake segue, I realized the sky was getting darker, not lighter, so I got up to investigate. At that exact moment, a massive wall of black clouds was racing towards us out of the west at, found out shortly, 38 miles per hour. Pretty fast for a wall.
I did what all good sailors do when faced with heavy weather: I made sure the wine glasses left topsides the night before were stowed safely below.
Then I pulled in the cockpit cushions, closed the hatches, and suggested to my co-captain that he move a specific part of his anatomy out of bed and be ready for a little rock 'n' roll.
I finished pulling on my clothes, peeked out a salon window, and saw a dust cyclone spin east out of Grant Park into the harbor, pretty much heading right toward us. The word waterspout briefly entered my mind. I chased it back out. I totally didn't know what to do with that possibility, and figured it was better not to waste time thinking about something I had zero chance of dealing with.
The cyclone passed to the north, but at that same moment, the wind rose to a freaky whistle, cued the lightening and thunder, and before we knew it we were rocking 35 degrees to port then starboard, then port, then starboard, on winds blowing with gusts to 58.
In those high-adrenaline moments when you taste metal, it's hard to remember to pick up your camera and snap a few pix. So I'm unhappy to say I don't have images to show for the experience, except these:
In a weird meta-experience, we found ourselves peering at the NOAA website --


Another band of weather moved through the area later in the day, there seen passing well to the south, thoughtfully not disturbing a housekeeping opportunity:

Happily, that wasn't the case on this day that came in like a lion and went out like a lamb.
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