Scary Radio

Awoke Sunday morning on the boat, in a secluded anchorage 30 miles from home. Everything was calm, the sky a bit gray, the water smooth and shiny. I turned on the VHF radio looking for a weather forecast. Cutting in to the middle of a report, I heard "... Sunday, high of forty-four degrees, with winds of 45 to 55 miles per hour..." I practically had a heart attack. I think I stopped listening in a panic, picturing the impending whole gale that was, apparently, going to blow in out of nowhere in a matter of hours. Then I heard "This is NOAA weather radio WKZZ41 broadcasting on a frequency of 162.5 megahertz from the summit of Mount Washington..." Yeah. Way to scare the sailors. This is part of a strange trend this year, in which my marine radio is picking up terrestrial weather forecasts, but not marine forecasts.

The day turned out to have very pleasant winds and temperatures. And ended, beautifully, with a bald eagle flying the length of the boat, stern to bow, just above the masthead, as we were making the final leg to home.