Strong squalls in the BVI tonight...

Great, we go from earthquakes to very strong tropical waves in the same weekend! I was congratulating ourselves this afternoon as I finished sewing our 80 foot high sail, many times (now up to 3 kilometers of seams I understand!) The sewing machine was oiled and I made it go away...

The weather has been semi shitty all day, but just before sunset tonight it really turned ugly! Not a very good picture by the waves were sure rolling down here in Sopers Hole.

We saw over 30 knots and were sitting down below when we heard an awful noise. Ran up to the cockpit with flashlights, too squally to really see anything out there, and could not see what had banged. Bazza was up on deck about the same time I spied a bent stainless steel pole on our awning (you know, the one we just fixed) and it looked like the entire awning was going to be carried away. Turns out our "must be able to float free" liferaft cover on the front of the boat had flown of, hit the pole and then gone overboard.
Bazza first (and probably only) thought was "it will take me two days to remake that!" and when we had a break in the squalls, we were out in the dinghy looking like madman I am sure going up and down the channel onto Little Thatch taking a look for it!
No where in site, we will look on the shores in the morning... This is what i looked like when I came back...

What else did we find in the dinghy? Well the wind was so strong it took our windvane straight off the top of the mast and deposited it our dinghy!!
We must be in "one step forwards three steps back land here" doing maintenance...

Heard a couple Pan Pans on the radio, one was a sailboat with a couple and a child aground by the Puerto Rico lighthouse, (bad place to be aground...) one off of culebra , and they are talking to some one else now but I don't have any details yet. I wonder how other boats fared tonight in these squalls! There seems to be quite a few around this weekend for the first time anyways.