Monday, October 25, 2010 – Isle of Hope Marina near Savannah, GA

Surprisingly, we did not experience any thunderstorms last night. We had put out two bow anchors yesterday and had some difficulty getting them up with the strong current, the wind and the location of the anchors. All of these things were working against our ability to retrieve them easily so we ended up tying a float to the line of the second anchor, letting it go and then returning to fish it out after the main anchor was brought aboard.

We were on our way shortly after 9 am and arrived at the Isle of Hope Marina an hour later where we took a slip. Life’s 2 Short was still on the dock, but they were preparing to leave within the hour and head to their friends’ dock about 50 miles further south. After we were secure in our slip, we gave Todd and Brenda a hand as they maneuvered out of theirs. The boats were packed in pretty tightly and it took an experienced captain and some help on the dock to overcome the current and get away safely.

After we were checked in, we borrowed one of the marina’s loaner cars to do our provisioning. While Maureen was at the grocery store, Gale drove to West Marine to pick up several items, not the least of which was a spare water pump that we believed will need to be installed soon. Our current pump has been sounding “funny” so it probably won’t last much longer.

We were back at the marina by 3 pm and took some time to stow things away. After that, Maureen gathered up the laundry to use the marina’s washer and dryer and Gale continued on with boat chores. We finished our tasks around sunset and just before a severe thunderstorm hit. During a big surge of water, our shore power cord was yanked out of the connection to the boat and the breaker on the dock’s power pedestal was tripped. This proved to be quite fortuitous since almost immediately following the surge, the boat was struck by lightning. We were not aware of the lightning strike at the time – we only knew we were without power – but there had been a dockhand out in the storm assisting a boat into the slip next to us and witnessed the strike on our mast which arced out from the spreader bars and sideways to the boat that had just arrived.