MEETING RENATA….

I’m going to insert a few images here that cover a few days of Isaac…

Grey skies, blue skies, intrepid surfers..(crazy, every last one of them)..

And then there was the day that I met Renata……

I started out for a walk…looked like the worst was all over, and I thought I’d look for some scenic beach images….so off I went, down the beach…

STARTING OFF ON MY ADVENTURE…NOTICE THE TREES…

I wandered quite a distance….hearing stories from other beach walkers of a frantic scramble to place newly hatched sea turtles into the crazy gulf waters…Their nest had been disturbed by the high waters, and they were prematurely introduced to the world…should have been during the dark of the night…We have to block all light from our homes during all dark hours so that the newly hatched loggerheads will head for the water and not the lights of human creation….

I enjoyed the next hour very much….collecting a few shark’s teeth and watching the surf wash in, creating swirling patterns of water and foam…and then I turned around….

OH….MY…..LORD……

The sky had gone from blue to “Yikes ! ” in just a few moments…it had been doing that for days….and there I was…a long way from shelter, WITH MY CAMERA!!!    I grabbed the baseball cap from my head…(I had stuffed all of my crazy curly hair up in it), and covered the camera.  I began trudging through the sand as quickly as I could, back the way that I had come…I had decided to head back to the shelter of the trees that I had passed at the beginning of my walk…as you can see,  the trees were a LONG way back down the beach….

The wind began to pick up and I caught up with a woman walking ahead of me…she turned and looked at me and said ” What the @$#^ is going on!”  I told her I didn’t know but that I was heading for the trees..and I kept going….I looked back and she seemed to be heading back the opposite way..where there was no hope of shelter.

As I got closer and closer to the  trees, the rain began..the wind was blowing at an incredible speed and I had to grab hold of “sea oats” and pull myself along the edge of the water, it had roared in up to the vegetation….You’re supposed to be careful of the sea oats, but at that point if a machete had been available, I would have used it to clear a path…

Upon reaching the trees, I moved as far back from the shore as I could and found a circle of smaller palms and trees to take cover in…I looked back at the Gulf, and I saw the woman that I had passed on the beach!  She crowded in with me  in our somewhat protected area..but we were both soaked to the skin. She said she had tried to go back the way that she had come, but decided it was too late….she said, “to be honest, I thought this was a tornado”…….We waited for the storm to move through, and eventually it did…I looked and my camera was DRY!  Thank goodness for that baseball cap…of course I looked like a drowned poodle, but better me than the camera.   My new friend and I made our way back out onto the beach and began the trip back to the surfing area…..before we parted, she turned to me, shook my hand and said, “I”m Renata”.

So there you have it….Meeting Renata.

September 1, 2012 | Categories: Storm, Surfing | Tags: beach, Clouds, gulf, sky, Storm, surfers, surfing, Tropical, Tropical Storm, water | 40 Comments »