the forecast

Less than a week before we leave so I grabbed some more food while at the grocery this morning.  Raw spanish peanuts, banana chips and dried mango spears.   Divided them up in to a dozen cups then poured each cup in to a zip lock snack bag.  This is the kind of snack I enjoy late morning or late afternoon.  Bruce likes the snack crackers and beef jerky, we'll have that on board too.

Also took a look at the seven day front forecast.  Accuracy this far out is far from certain, but I'll be watching this page as we get closer to see what we can expect.  It really doesn't matter a lot.  Being out there from seven to ten days means we will see at least one full cycle of weather - warm moist air from the south being pushed out by a (relatively) cooler mass of dry air from the northwest, the mixing of the two possibly bringing some rain and thunderstorms.  And then a couple of nice days while the humidity builds again.  We've got the gear to deal with all that and will take it as it comes.
The last time we sailed together we drove down Hwy. 17 to Harkers Island on a rainy day.  We left Chesapeake in a light mist, about sixty miles down in to North Carolina is was a heavy downpour.
I had never expected to use the bilge pump with the boat high and dry on a trailer but there I was in a gas station parking lot somewhere north of New Bern pumping out the boat.  Got some strange looks from the truck drivers.  (This was a lesson learning event on the trip, the first of several.  Since the boat wasn't going to be in the water that day I had not snugged down the waterproof ports, particularly those under the seats in the aft cockpit.  The heavy rains put a couple of inches of water in the boat, some of which got in to the storage areas.  Always snug down the hatches and to bag the gear, even if kept in a waterproof (supposedly) area.)
That next day we sailed out of Harkers Island Fishing Center in the rain, thunder rumbling in the distance.  By midafternoon is was blue skies.

What kind of weather can we expect?  Rain, sun, wind, no wind, hot, humid, cool, dry?  All of the above I suspect.

Steve