Took an early morning walk and let Siutik run for a bit yesterday. She took her time getting in the mood, she is not that keen on crusty surface snow but soon got into the mood.

There is some snow in the forecast for this coming week, not a lot and temperatures not below -8 in evenings.
Nice temperatures but a bit on the oped side for this time of year.

Still trying to off the left over Xmas ham, this time on a baguette with lettuce, tomato and red onion with sweet potato fries on the side.

We had a shortish (40 min) power outage yesterday afternoon. Not long some would say, but when you know the truth about the state of the power plant it is not very comforting.

Another nice day on the books yesterday, clear and light winds. Some very light snow falling this morning, we wont get any of the snow that seems to be falling by the truck load down south.

The harbor ice is firming up but still caution in needed.

News came from Hopedale that an older gentleman went through the ice and perished yesterday. He was walking, so with his experience and still having difficulty just shows that great care is needed when out on new ice.

A correction on the Hopedale incident, man was on snowmobile. 

Well the yucky weather did not deter the late shoppers and those wishing to win any of the Xmas draws in the stores on Xmas eve.

Wet snow and light rain fell most of the day, it stopped precipitating long enough in the afternoon for a couple of planes to get in. Temperature of +1 all day.

Still just above 0 this morning. Hope Santa and his deer had rubbers (wellington boots) on,

Have a great day everyone.

Compliments of the season to ye one and all.


Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah.

It was a grand day indeed yesterday. Winter solstice and the sun sure took its time getting up over the mountains. Top photo taken at 8:10 official sunrise.
Then mid morning we took a stroll down to airship to see Carters dad come in and give him some goodies.

By 9:45 the sun was just barely peeking sober the lowest of the hills and reflecting off the ice.

Meantime at the strip busy times, four planes on ground at one time with Carters dads plane expected soon.

Lots of people and freight being moved this time of year, our grandson Brian even had a ski doo come in on one of the planes.















With clear sky, no wind  the snow capped mountains and the clear glassy ice it sure was a picture perfect scene.

Now it is time for snow, not enough to get around town without wearing out the skis and tracks of snowmobiles, not to mention the insulation value. But we dont need the aggro of the storms that seem to hit southern parts with increasing regularity and fearsomeness.

The harbor ice looked beautiful yesterday evening, all sorts of pinky blue hues reflecting along with the white capped mountains.
There have been folks out walking on it, always someone has to be the first.

The warm front we have in forecast wont help in strengthening the ice.

The H of A is still sitting this morning, the filibusterer continues, it is revealing the stark truth about who is going to be paying for this Muskrat Falls folly in black and white. It will be the ordinary folk of the province who will bear the brunt, with no possible recourse or review of rates for the life of the pay back.

As Pat Martin said; rat faced whores indeed.

The NL Hydro's appeal for conservation did not go over that well with folks in town. Rat faced whore would count as a polite response to NL Hydro compared to other comments on social media.

Made up some light wholewheat bread and some brushetta baguettes yesterday. Then had a hankering for something different,  Italian meat balls halved, tomato on one side of baguette, feta cheese and wilted spinach on the other side, marry them together, presto something different.

Would make a nice luncheon addition to the dinning room at the Atsanik Lodge.

Days will only get longer now.

Foggy out there this marnin. Foggy in here too, out of sorts what with these private notifications of power outages that dont happen, not on our street but seems they did happen in other areas of town.

Now if NL Hydro could just treat the people on the Labrador coast with a little dignity and respect then maybe some of the that respect would be reciprocated.

Until then; your a bunch of arse holes NL Hydro. 

Strange how  prophetic the above and other recent post turned out. After listening to little miss know nothing from Hydro on CKOK one would think that everything was under control. 

The underground drums were saying a different story. Then a day after little miss know nothing Hydro comes out with all sorts of public announcements in form of press releases and twitter the whole shebang.
NLHydro ‏@NLHydro 
!/2 - As a precaution, customers in Nain asked to conserve electricity while the diesel plant requires repair on 1 of 3 generating units.
 NLHydro ‏@NLHydro

2/2 - For more info for customers in Nain, view http://bit.ly/Zm2hrC 

Lots of unhappy campers here let me tell you, nothing like stepping back 20 years. Come to think of it we seem to be doing a lot of stepping back on many issues of late. 

Many people have put a lot of effort into Christmas decorating their homes, now this will darken their doorsteps.  

  

Here is me at my diplomatic best, an e mail to NL Hydro Customer service. 

What prompted this diplomacy one may ask, well the news that there is another power outage scheduled tomorrow morning, 5 to 7, of course it is not up on the NL Hydro outage web page as yet. Another reason is that I was bugged by a comment one of the Hydro mechanics said to a hotel employee prior to them leaving Tuesday morning, *better get a big load of wood in for over Christmas*.

This is just the first contact, best to go through the rungs before getting to the top I have learnt, just hope it is not too late. 

 Hi there,

Id Like to know what type of tin pot organization you guys are running. Nain had a not 10 year old plant almost burnt down due to lack of due diligence.
Then you put multi millions of dollars into the damaged plant with a new gen set plus all the repairs.

Now we are back to a situation we had going back 15 years before the new plant was built up on the hill.

One operational unit, one barely operational unit and one unit out of service.  Rumor is that an emergency unit is being brought in, is that true?

Whatever is true one thing is for sure, the management and overseeing of the plant in Nain needs an urgent review. How can new units and units with recent repairs and upgrades be in such bad shape.

Brian Willimas
Nain NL

Continuing on with the Grinch them.

The hydro plant will be on peoples mind over the festive season. Yep, the plant that was less than 10 years old when it caught fore and almost destroyed. The plant that then had tens of millions of dollars spent on repairs and a new Gen set (generating unit). The plant that had a power outage (among many over the years) last week necessitating a crew being flown in for repairs. The plant that now has one operating Gen set in good order, one Gen set that was just repaired and is in dodgy condition and one Gen set that is nonoperational (meaning there is no stand by back up).

I remind one and all this is the same crowd that brings us and is responsible for building and operating the so called lower Churchill Falls.

“This is truly a significant day in the history of Newfoundland and Labrador as we prepare to write the next chapter in our province’s future, a future that will be guided by energy independence, security, and self-sufficiency,” said Premier Dunderdale. “With the development of Muskrat Falls, our province will make the transition from an economy dependent on non-renewable resources to a diversified renewable economy fueled by clean renewable power that will provide benefits and opportunity for future generations of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.”

May the spirits spare us from this malfeasance. 

Beautiful out there this morning, calm, -10 ish, sun behind the mountains.

 Ice is forming nicely in the harbor. Ice is soon to be disturbed by the mv Aston who is due in at 4 pm.
It is a catch 22 situation, better to let nature take its course with ice freezing (there are many reasons why), or better to have two trailer loads of  firewood delivered to the community for elders.

There are those who will side with acquiescence, and those who would say all this could have been avoided with planing and priorities earlier in the shipping season.

Later in the day: Well the arrival of the mv Astron could be best described as *In and out like a honey moon dick*.

She was in and gone by 1:15pm. And any acquiescencers got a kick in the teeth, only a quarter of the expected 75 cords of wood arrived. No room was the reason.

Figure out that cost per cord of wood, trucked to Cartwright, ship diverted to bring wood all way up the Labrador coast in December to drop off 20 cord of wood.

Temperature taken a dip again, 5 degrees colder at the house than official of -12 as the sun travels just below the mountains. Very brief exposure to direct sun this time of year.

By the forecast we wont be seeing any snow for this week, bummer eh.

What would another week be without: and out on the water update. mv Astron been anchored out of Black Tickle since Saturday night;

Monday, Dec. 17th

Delayed, anchored at Porcupine Bay.  Unable to dock at Black Tickle due to high winds.  Arrival time to be advised when weather improves.

Arrival times for other ports to be advised.

Next port(s) of call:  Black Tickle, Cartwright, Nain and Lewisporte

Speaking of on the water, after about 10 years of Humming and haring we have a request for proposals out for new ferry. 
 Warning: dont get your knickers in a knot over this, asking private enterprise to submit RFP to build and operate vessel will not work for up this way. Only way to go is for Government to build the vessel and operate it themselves, after all it is our essential highway.

Well that was an anti climatic evening and morning to say the least.

Needs an explanation I know: First off there was a snow and blowing snow warning issued for our area for lat yesterday and overnight. Most were looking forward to the snow, not so much the accompanying wind, but ya take what is given. Bugger me when I arise not a flake of snow has fallen and the winds are quite mild. So much for that.

The second anti climax: Late yesterday afternoon a local Facebooker, who is not even in town, posted from a friends Facebook a power outage warning for Nain.

Nice of them to do this as as usual the powers that be at NLHydro neglected to give an official heads up (in keeping with the vagaries and uniqueness of the geographic area) of the pending outage.

Any way all sorts of chatter and concerns posted on these posts as the outage was first going to be from midnight to eight in the morning.
This was later refined to only some areas of town at a time, rolling outages, but the impression was that most would be without power for an extended amount of unknown time. Plus there was a scheduled teacher Xmas party at the hotel.

Thankfully the temps had risen to minus single digits and the outages were not extreme, at least on our street, I think they may have been longer in certain other parts of town.

So no blame on the messenger; more like thanks is needed.  But it highlights what I and others suspect, the equipment in the hydro plant is not sufficient to meet the present needs of the community let alone the future needs as the town grows.
CKOK had a late update on their web site, thanks to them but not that much use as they are not on air Saturdays and I doubt many would check out the web site

In the coming years several large buildings are planed plus the usual housing builds each year.

On the brighter side we had a nice juicy healthy burger n chips to celebrate the impending doom that did not materialize.

On a bed of lettuce and tomato I placed a burger topped with fried onions, melted cheese (old white cheddar) and an egg. Yum yum pigs bum.

We-I attended another Xmas seniors dinner last evening. This one put on by the NG DHSD staff. Nice little do with good food, Santa could not make it this year but he sent along a small gift for all in his absence.

All these Xmas socials, and many others during the year, have had to find other venues due to the community hall being condemned due to asbestos. This one was held in the school gym.

There are plans in the works to build a new multipurpose building but that is a way down the road, maybe further down that road than expected now that the Provincial government is busted broke despite all the oil wealth these townie types keep bragging about. Oh there is money in the kitty but the bright minds have kept a couple of billion to dump into the Muskrat Falls debacle.

I digress; so the Xmas do went off rather well and the DHSD staff did a great job looking after the quests. 

As every body and his gun knows the caribou herds in Labrador are in serious decline. When I first came here the George River heard was up in the 800,000 range. Today it is down under 25,000.

Since the 1980 s it has been discovered that there are splinter groups of the Goearge River herd, plus there are smaller herds in the south west of Lbarador.
Any way long story short they are all in serious trouble.

We keep getting a lot of empty rhetoric about conservation and the provincial government and the Nunatsiavut Government have introduced smaller kills, although the NG one was a volunteer one, which by the way most people abided by.

Now this year with no word from the provincial government NG has come out with a  very blunt press release asking for a no kill of caribou for a couple of years. From NG perspective still a voluntary ask, but the province and other native groups have to come the the party as well.

A very big ask for peoples who have relied on caribou for their main source of red meat (and one time clothing) for generations, but it has to be done IMO. Lets hope the others see it the same way.

We had a clear crisp morning earlier, clouding over mid morn with snow and winds on the cards later and into tonight. At least the temps are rising from -19 to -13 as I write. -25 wind chill though.

Meanwhile out on the water: Yep, even when the shipping season is over (or so most thought) we can still relay some very funny stuff that comes out of CAI-N.

The updated mv Astron schedule going  south was confusion enough, it went from an ETA Rigolet 2:45am Saturday to a ETA Rigolet 8:30 pm Friday to  the latest ETA Rigolet 9 am today. I shit you not.

Then low and behold this is the latest screen shot of CAI-N schedule  

MV Astron (Freighter)

 

Saturday, December 15th

ETA Black Tickle 09:00 am

 

Arrival times for other ports to be advised.

 

Next port(s) of call:  Black Tickle, Cartwright, Nain and Lewisporte

 

Mind you I am not surprised she is heading back here, the lay down area at the dock has many many empty sea cans sitting there, not the usual for the long winter ahead. 

The internal communication within CAI-Nunatsiavut maybe the pits but give the crew credit for having at it. The Astron was in and out of Hopedale by 3:30 am yesterday, then into Nain by 1:30 and out with an ETA midnight Natuashish.
I'm not sure if there is any freight left in Lewisport for the coast, have had mixed messages on that last week and have not spoken to anyone on it this week.

Nice clear weather, -19 at the house this am, we can do with more snow now, we may get some on the weekend, but then so is the wind foretasted. 

Nice to see some countries protecting species, must not be any non renewables in the area says the cynic in me.

Official photo of 2012 Order of Newfoundland and Labrador

recipients.

 

Nice sunny day for the most part yesterday. Air traffic not as busy below 3 thousand feet but above 25 thousand was real busy with contrails crisscrossing the sky above Nain from east and north east.

Meanwhile on the water: No better mind has come forth with an explanation on the workings of coastal shipping. Some more to explain; the schedual ealier in the week clearly stated that after off loading in Makkovik the Astron would head for Nain then do ports south.

As mentioned yesterday she headed into Postville after Makkovik, and now this morning she has an ETA Hopedale of 5:30.  I Quote;

*ETA Hopedale 05:30 am (weather permitting)*

*Next port(s) of call: Hopedale, Natuashish, Nain*

I only mention this because this type of irresponsible behavior puts everybody who is expecting freight out on a limb and tensions are high not knowing WTF is going on.

And an update from the off load in Makkovik, and I quote;   *Back to the ‘70’s. Astron took the fork lift on the ship as she is not retuning here. 1000’s of cases of items to be unloaded from sea can’s by hand.

Onto the trucks and off again*.

Both human and freight left at risk with these below freezing temperatures. 

And to top it off I was sent this link, not sure of the date but interesting to say least. That picture of the Astron looks like it was taken in south side of St. Johns harbor.

I guess it is done to keep everybody on their toes, latest from confusion are us- 

Thursday, Dec. 13th

Discharged at Hopedale @ 03:00 am

 

ETA Nain 1:30 pm

 

Next port(s) of call: Nain, Natuashish, Rigolet, Black Tickle and Lewisporte

Another no plane day yesterday, grey flat with light snow all day.

The mv Astron made it into Makkovik last evening. An earlier arrival there was a tug and barge en rout Hopedale to the Island, she had over a foot of ice on her starboard side. So the weather is not ideal still.

One has to speculate if the captain and crew are all that happy about being out in these conditions with a heavily loaded small container ship.

Update: This morning CAI-N has the Astron anchored off Postville awaiting conditions to improve to dock and discharge. Which is at odds with the previous announcement that Nain was next port of call after Makkovik. I will leave it to greater minds than mine to figure it all out.

On regional front; the mariner restaurant adjacent to Hotel North is on fire. According to person on the ground and a guest of hotel the fire started in a back kitchen where deep fryers are located. 

The mariner is a popular eating place for many people from the coast.

According to Facebook there is no truth to the rumor that the end of the world starts at the Mariner Restaurant.  If they have had said with north coast freight service then maybe.

deja vu all over again

Chief of Attawapiskat, Theresa Spence has made the decision to conduct a hunger strike to protest the actions of the current Conservative Government and their unilateral decision making against her community and against all First Peoples of this great land.

MONDAY, December 10, 2012

2:00 pm Press Conference (Destination to be determined)

TUESDAY, December 11, 2012

6:00 am Sunrise/Pipe Ceremony at Victoria Island

9:00 am Chief will later commence Hunger Strike at Parliament

I will update further details as we go along! Keep watching!

Megwetch.

Last week my sister down under made a Rotweinkuchen cake and posted results on Facebook.

The motivation to make the cake stemmed from the fact they have a visitor from Germany staying with them, and the visitors mom sent my sister the recipe.

So that motivated me to give this wine chocolate cake a goo as well. I did up a collage of some of the steps and the ingredients, as that's what some people do on food blogs. The only variation from the recipe is I added a handful of white chocolate along with the chopped dark chocolate at the final mixing stage.

The result, not too shabby, nice and moist inside with a deep chocolate flavor, the wine is evident as well. Best to keep an eye on the baking time as if in oven too long it could come out overly dry.

Meanwhile out on the water: The mv Astron still has not made it past Cartwright.  Still storm bound and will be for the day at least.

Planes got on the go late yesterday, weather in other communities south of Natuashish held things up, then it was like LAX @YDP in the afternoon.

Nice covering of fresh snow out, wind is up so how much will be there at end of day I wonder.

The annual seniors Christmas party put on jointly by the recreation department of NICG and the staff at Labrador Grenfell health facility was yesterday. I did not get to attend but Fran did. Good turn out I am told, santa was handing out large bags of gifts to all that attended and those that did not.  Contents of one bag are pictured.

Big thank you to all those that work so hard in organizing all the little gifts and those that help out on the day.

In a way there would have been many mixed emotions yesterday. The Nain Huskies won the schools provincial volley ball tournament, the Makkovik girls won their provincial tournament as well. Unfortunately weather prevented them from getting home yesterday.

The flip side is along with a couple of regular attendee seniors who are out in hospital receiving treatment a long time fisher and hunter of the old school passed away this weekend.

The ways of relying on the land for subsistence is sure passing by quickly (some might say gone for good), one does not realize how quickly until someone leaves for whatever awaits them in the ever-after.  

Meanwhile out on the water: The mv Astron  left Lewisport in another attempt to deliver freight to the coast. She left Saturday with an ETA Makkovik 6am today.

Not so fast says the sea spirits, this is the north Atlantic in December. So the Astron is storm bound in Cartwright. 

Must be very stressful for people who have freight on the boat and still at the dock awaiting shipment. Most of the world has moved on and joined the 21st century. We here on the Labrador coast are regressing (thanks to the provincial government) at a fast pace back to the 1970s or earlier.

Had a hankering for corn bread yesterday. Not sure why, have not had it for awhile, or maybe because of the new De Buyer fry pan (this one is a 10 inch job).

Any way this recipe is a southern baked corn bread in skillet. Not bad for change of pace, bit crumbly but that is OK, I can use it in the chicken stuffing today.

The Nain Huskies volley ball team won the schools provincial tournament yesterday. great job, teams form the coast have been doing very well in Volleyball this year.

There was a comment on an older post that I thought I would bring forward to respond to:
 Christopher Brennen
Any update on the restoration of local CBC to the cable providers? I know that Eastlink here in Postville still haven't added it back in. What's the situation in Nain? 

For what it is worth the cable companies never had any intention of supplying the regional CBC feed to their small community customers once they lost the free to air pick up off CBC sites.

Despite some empty rhetoric from cable providers, and others who should have done their due diligence before speaking, it would cost thousands of dollars for each community to provide the digital equipment needed.

I am not defending the CBC actions on shutting down all the small community transmitter sites, nor the cable providers, just telling it how it is.

So the answer to you question would be, no, Nain does not have the local CBC feed either.

I am not sure how things will play out in the future, Shaw satellite has been directed by the CRTC to carry some sort of regional CBC feed come January. Trouble for East Link customers is they are affiliated with Rogers not Shaw.

If East link had a deal with Shaw they could do the small communities at a cheaper cost.

Oh looky looky, wind warnings right along the east coast.

Well by crikey that will play havoc with old ships with containers on deck exposed to freezing spray and all.
The mv Astron did a fast turn around at Lewisport and departed for Makkovik with ETA Dec 8.

All to no avail as she has promptly done another fast turn around and headed back to port. 

MV Astron (Freighter)

Thursday, December 6th

Returned to Lewisporte due to high winds & swells.  Departure time to be advised.

Next port(s) of call:  Makkovik, Nain, Natuashish, Hopedale Postville and Rigolet.

Not like it has not happened before, not like the folks who run this shamozzel of a shipping outfit (the Government) have not had years of experience. 

Yet with only one boat (outdated) for most of the shipping season the government has done dick all nothing to improve the the situation. With another load after this one who knows what is in store. Mitigation and due diligence indeed.

On the power outage pole down situation: The Hydro line crew were quick in isolating the downed pole and getting power back to a large part of Middle Path Rd. The business sector was all back up mid afternoon. Not sure about the area on the down side, hope it was not too long.

With the new snow down and likely to hang around we enter into a yearly ritual of ski doos and 4 wheel traffic plus pedestrian traffic all vying for the same narrow space we call roads up here.

For this post I will just touch on the topic of (what to me is oxymoronic) silencers on ski doos.

Ski doo silencers seem to be manufactured for performance without any effort made to suppress the noise emanating out the exhaust.
Now this may be all well and good for race tracks and out of town wilderness ridding (my opinion is they should be banned from wilderness areas until noise effects on wildlife can be determined).

But for around town use, bane them all together. One small example of why; couple weeks ago after the very first snow fall that barely covered the ground someone decided to take his ski doo with silencer (or cracked muffler) for a run around town in the early hours of a Sunday.

Loud does not describe the noise that could be heard all round town no matter where this guy was on his machine. These silencers have the ability to frighten the bejasus out of anyone.

This resulted in quite a bit of chatter on social media, most condemning these silencers and some condemning the driver.

It does represent a bit of a problem for people who buy ski doos either new or second hand as some machines come with these silencers installed.
Alas I think the greater good has to take precedence and the owners of these machines have to pay due diligence about what is installed on the machines they are buying.

Any way it seems the social media chatter was enough for the local council to get back (it has been on the back burner for some years) at introducing town traffic by laws.

One of the by-laws they can and should introduce is noise pollution, others will be more problematic because of the type of roads we have and the conditions of the roads i.e. gravel and dusty in summer and snow in winter, some narrow to very narrow with nowhere for pedestrians to walk safely.


There was a short power outage around 3 this morning, apparently a longer one for part of the town. The primary school is closed with further updates at 11. The school is in the down town main business area.

Temperatures are a mild -5 or so, that should help with the pipes not freezing.

NLHydro we have a problem: After further inspection we have a serious issue with a pole partly down. Only thing that prevented it from crashing to the ground are the telephone and cable wires that run on the hydro poles at a lower level. 

Not sure if it is a lack of due diligence issue or a vehicle hit the pole, only two ways it could have happened.

Any way the main business section of town and homes along Middle Path Road are all without power. A line crew would have to be sent in from Goose Bay to deal with this.

It is now known that a vehicular accident precipitated the downing of the hydro pole. 

Early morn, straight road, bit of snow on road. There was also a medi vac (medical evacuation) flight this morning.

Update: Incident report; lots of rumors so wont get into them. What I am reasonably sure of is; three men in vehicle, vehicle runs off road, hits hydro pole and snaps it off near bottom, vehicle hits mound of dirt and rock near pole, vehicle rolls couple time, one perp ejected out but OK. Two perps trapped in vehicle, one OK one unconscious for a time, this is the guy medi vaced out.

Vehicle has front and rear glass busted out, air bag activated. 

Hydro line crew landed at noon, immediately on scene to do repairs and replacement of pole, rather a big job, power out could last until tomorrow.

Well it seems I put too much trust in some information I presumed was a good source. Funny how some people try and hide the truth based on where one is from. Any way there is official news out on the incident now.  Some folks are in serious do do I would think.

We have some snow on the ground, present weather is marginal here for flying but not good other places with freezing up conditions. Lets hope for some good conditions to keep what we have.

This week the provincial government FINELY released details of the home heating rebate for this heating season. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth and all, I'm sure we are all very grateful and all but when you go and pay $620:40 for 410 liters (2 drums or 90 gallons) of oil delivered it takes some of the excitement away.

With all the travails of our MP in Ottawa the Penashue name is taking one hell of a beating in the countries media.

But in our mind the Penashue name rates up there with Gandhi, Tutu and Mandela and the like. And it has nothing to do with her son, it has everything to do with the courage and inner strength of Elizabeth Penashue and her husband and her followers and supporters.  

Nice clear crisp morning, down to -18 at the house. Some weather on way, pretty pink ski all across the east as the sun rose.

Mean time on the water things are confused, at least in the mind of who ever updates the Astron update. Earlier had her getting into Postville today than changed to read

MV Astron (Freighter)

 

Tuesday, Dec. 4th - Correction

ETA Black Tickle 7:00 pm  Whose on first I wonder?

After successfully warding off colds and flues for a couple of years I have been struck down with a bad oh cold since Thursday. I have had worse colds, this one is hanging around in the head, just when you think it has cleared the stuffiness re appears. It is less a pain in the arse than a pain in the head.

So to brighten my day and tingle my taste buds I experimented yesterday. Beer braised cabbage, two roasted spuds, slow roasted port loin with mushroom-sherry-cream reduction, more commonly known as sauce.

I rather like the sherry thing, on the other hand Fran made no comment.

Meanwhile out on the water the Astron is painstakingly making crawling its way down the coast unloading freight as she goes, when weather permits.

What with weather and slowness of unloading it took three days to get into and out of Hopedale over the weekend. 

Now this morning she anchored off Hopedale due to high winds and heavy seas. 
Not sure about the winds, they have subsided, the seas could be on, just goes to show the inadequacy of the boat for the job at hand.