Tropical Storm Danny is futzing around to the south, due to hit the Cape in the form of some windy rain tomorrow. I headed out to the Osterville Cut at noon for a service in memorial of the son of a friend who tragically died last weekend diving off of the Oyster Harbors Drawbridge. The skies were bruised and ominous — fitting for a sad day — but I wondered how a Wampanoag felt four hundred years ago, standing on the shores of Coatuet and Cotacheset, looking out at Nantucket Sound with a hurricane over the horizon, no idea what was coming, but perhaps tuned into some natural indicators that I’m too technically enabled to see.
Now I can track this stuff on the National Weather Service … or Wunderground … or Accuweather or gazillion weather sites, all loaded with Flash-enabled graphics, and probability cones, and hourly predictions that tell me to expect a 30 mph gust tomorrow at 3 pm.
Whatever. I rather be the one who looks at the sky and says, “Going to be a blow tomorrow.”
So out of the water came the motorboat — more for a powerwashing to get the mid-season slime and barnacles off the hull than fear of some meterological disaster. The big boat sits where it sits. I may pop out there early in the morning and take off the sails so the wind doesn’t unfurl them and cause mayhem in the harbor. The weather service is calling for gale conditions with winds in the high 40s – enough to make a mess, but not a disaster zone.