Yikes. Just yikes. Look at that thing. On the water, with us.
Yes, it is a for-real and actual water spout, on the water…with us.
This was the last day of the Narragansett Bay Yachting Association’s Junior Olympic Regatta, known as “Junior Race Week”. Three days of small boat sailing, hundreds of little boats – Opti’s, 420’s and lasers and hundreds of kids racing them. This was the first year for our son racing his Optimist Dinghy off the beach in Bristol, RI.
With my parents wanting to see some of the racing, the natural thing to do was bring Evenstar over to Bristol and drop the anchor. What a great platform to watch the racing from of course – you have heads, food, cold drinks and a dinghy you can lower to zoom in for the close up action if you want it. Bristol isn’t even an hour away powering and is nicely protected with good holding.
The day’s wind was light and variable, good racing for a while but painfully slow towards the end as the wind just died off. When the racing ended the plan was my son would sail out to Evenstar and we’d haul the Opti on deck and tie it down then run in on the dinghy to get the reast of his gear on the beach. Just after the racing ended while we were doing this the skies changed…they got dark, quickly. So we hurried, gathering gear and running it back out (unfortunately leaving an expensive boat cover on the beach), tieing everything down and securing it – even for the short ride home. Which in hindsight made me happy.
As we motored the conditions deteriorated rapidly from the clear skies and windless heat from earlier in the day. Rain started with wind. Then we looked South, and our jaws dropped when we saw the twister.
It is interesting, I grew up in the Midwest, in the so-called “Tornado Belt”. Shortly after my parents moved to Ohio they experienced one of the worst tornado outbreaks in history. While my sister and father saw two and had to get out of the car and lie in a ditch along the highway on the way home from her ballet class that day I never saw a single one, nor did I ever lay eyes on a single twister the whole time growing up doing “tornado drills” in school.
The irony is that I’ve now seen TWO tornados (or more correctly waterspouts), and both have been on Narrgansett Bay in Rhode Island – and area not exactly notorious for freaky tornado weather.
