4th of July - sun, boats, fireworks, and CHAOS!
- True North
- Jul 6
- 3 min read
4th of July in the Hamptons - Fancy! We got a mooring ball in Sag Harbor, along with the other giant boats and luxury yachts. We were a little our of our league here, but we had a great place for all the festivities. We spent the day hanging out on the boat and keeping cool in the water. Grilled dinner on the back deck and watched the fireworks from the front trampolines. Pretty nice!
The thunderstorms in the distance added a nice sunset and a backdrop to the fireworks show. We felt our first raindrops as the fireworks wrapped up, and quickly put away deck chairs, closed hatches, etc. Within a few minutes we got warnings on the phones about the storm and the wind, rain, lightning, & waves came up fast. We were checking our wind gauge to see how strong when the chaos really started. One of the big yachts seemed to be getting closer and was coming sideways through the mooring field - right toward us.
Panic mode set in as he was bearing down on us - his decks full of people running here and there. Jill got the engines going, I went forward and quickly untied us from our mooring ball. Andrew grabbed lifejackets, spotlights, etc. Once we were loose we quickly backed out of there and got away from the big boat. We didn't see what happened to them (or our mooring ball) since we were now in 40+ knots of wind, downpouring rain, and we could barely see the boats around us. Luckily we were out where the boats were more spread apart so we could navigate somewhat. It was raining so hard that we could barely see though... so hard that my lifejacket assumed I was under water and inflated on me!
The storm blew by within 20 to 30 minutes, then we had to try to get back to the mooring ball. The instruments track where we had gone the previous day, so we knew where the ball should be - just no empty ball there. It was pretty disorienting in the dark & rain, but we finally figured out that our ball was there, just someone else had tied up to it. We talked to the other boat - he had been hit by the big boat and had tied up the first place he could. I'm sure he was panicked and needed to assess the damage as quickly as possible - can't blame him for grabbing our ball. The storm had calmed by now and we were able to wait for him.
We assessed our damage once we were tied up. No crashed boat, but the place was a wreck. We had closed all the top hatches, but the small side windows were open. Now everything inside was wet. We had dishes and broken glass on the floor and stuff strewn everywhere. We had lost a few window screens and the new canvas cover for the helm station that Jill had just sewed.
Overall we were lucky and thankful (and shaking a bit). Whew - one for the books!
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