Hampton - at a dock, high water

Our walking path is under water!

This morning we restored all of are food. I woke up at nine and we went  to the rental car, the car is black and very comfortable and it was raining a lot. Grandpa had a list and Nana doses too so I went with Nana and got a lot of stuff. Then we had to get it on the boat in the pouring rain. Then I helped put it all away. We have about five cereal  boxes. It was a little hard with all the people because of the hurricane, but we made it out ok. I got a new rain jacket that is purple it is a lot better than my Fleetwing jacket. Fleetwing is the name of the boat and when you spend two weeks on the boat alone with them you earn your jacket. Mine is a little small now. We also were very flooded and had to take a different route from the store. We also saw the other dock away from us was flooded you saw the boats, but not the dock. Then we did some work that was a lot of fun algebra, I really get it. If you don't know me I hate math because it was hard and confusing. Then we watched a movie with some popcorn. Now we're here all snug. Well, time to read some Calvin & Hobbles bye

The water is rising, see the predicted vs actual water levels.  We've had continuous rain for the last two days and a strong easterly wind, that's a prescription for higher than normal tides. According to the nearest NOAA buoy, we are 4 ft above normal on all tides, low and high. We're keeping an eye on the pilings which, according to the dockhand have been high enough so no wind driven tides have floated the docks over the pilings, we hope that string continues! However, there have been flooding along the coast. Our morning running path was under water by the back bay (top photo). We went up the ramp to the docks instead of down (second photo). It looks like the flooding will only get worse since the winds are predicted to increase to a steady 30 mph for the next two days starting Saturday night. 

Now it's up to the docks, not down

Joaquin is still down in the Bahamas but the predicted path is now out to sea, far away from us but we'll still get the 30 kt winds and the associated tidal surge. We have a car for the weekend so we did provision today in the pouring rain, not much fun there but we are now fixed for the next leg south. On Saturday we're hoping for a break in the weather (before Joaquin arrives) to take Sarah to the Virginia Air and Space Museum just down the street. On Sunday and Monday Joaquin arrives and we're in for steady 30 kt winds for two straight days, oh joy. 

The first window to continue south still looks like Tuesday. We're hoping the Dismal Swamp will be open despite the strong winds which tend to bring down trees and other debris in the shallow canal, we'll see.