It was a good night’s sleep in a calm anchorage. We woke to lowering skies, increasing but refreshing winds, but an ominous radar picture and forecast. While we had coffee, Paula baked a double batch of brownies as we were out of treats and these might have to last us for a while.

Since high winds and thunderstorms were promised for later tonight, and the weather forecast for the whole of this week is currently poor, we decided to try a quick trip into town to see if we could buy some produce.

We dinghied again to the sailing club where we saw the same nice young lady as yesterday. There were a number of children and adults rigging small sailing sloops and launching them into the choppy waters. The sailing club appears very busy and a social center for some boaters.

We left the sailing club’s grounds and headed south and west. This part of town appears to be home to a portion of the Hispanic community and this was reflected in the grocery store. There was a wide selection of produce, some of it unfamiliar and exotic to us, such as cactus leaves, a vast array of different (and likely fiery) peppers, and many root vegetables. There was also a good selection of more boring and ordinary produce. We bought that stuff.

Once produce was packed in our backpacks, we hiked home. The houses of the neighborhood we walked through were compact and many were very beautiful.

Back at Poltergeist, the water was already quite choppy from the wind and boat traffic. We felt a bit like children crossing a busy highway as we crossed the ICW channel into the anchorage proper, trying to avoid fast speed boats and larger vessels.

The afternoon was spent topping off the water tanks, stowing the dinghy in advance of the bad weather, and charging the batteries. Today was not a great day for solar power, and since tomorrow will be even worse, Tommy decided to run the generator for a couple hours. In addition to the normal daily power load, we were also running the watermaker and charging the dinghy battery. With all the cloud cover, the solar panels just couldn’t keep up.

Paula prepared and stowed the new produce, fileted 3 frozen snapper for part of dinner, and tried to fish. The last was relaxing, but as seems usual this trip, no bites.

It rained intermittently, but the direction was such that we were able to keep portholes open on the port side of the boat for air flow, and not so hard that we couldn’t keep the hatches cracked, so we remained pretty comfortable.

Dinner was the last bits of the leftover meatloaf, pork, and green beans, along with pan-sautéed snapper filets lightly dredged in seasoned flour. We also had fruit salad, courtesy of The King’s grocery, and bread with butter.