By Capt. Larboard Slushbucket 

Even as Hurricane Jose fires a shot across our bows another year has passed under our keel and it already be ITLAP Day, 2017. While we appear to have dodged broadsides from Irma and Jose it still be a bit early to be removin’ ye hatch battens. We’ve been keepin’ a weather eye on ye tropics where yet another Cat 5 anchor-rattler threatens to send us all to Davey Jones.

Back in ye good old days of wooden ships and iron men ye first hint of an approachin’ storm might be a long ocean swell makin’ up from ye sou’east with high skuddin’ clouds and a fallin’ barometer. By then, of course, there was hardly time to batten ye hatches and veer out more anchor chain before ye proverbial grits hit ye proverbial fan. 

Ye good news for us current-day pirates is modern meteorology with all its satellites, radar and hurricane-huntin’ aircraft which give us a bilge load of warnin’ as ye storms approach.

Dr. Jeff Masters is predicting that the Fujiwhara effect (google it!) might possibly cause Jose to send Maria out to sea where she won't be a bother to Ocracoke.

Ye bad news, of course, is thar still aint a bloody thing we can do to avoid it if ye old widow-maker draws our number!

A few years in our wake, me old friend Karen worked at ye front desk of a local hotel.  Every time hurricane season hove into sight and a storm was brewin’ she’d call me up and ask what it was going to do. I’d, of course, share whatever I’d learned from me online weather sources, wonderin’ why she never looked at ‘em for herself.  Then one day she explains it to me.

“Whenever there’s something threatening in the tropics,” she said, “potential hotel guests call me up to see if it’s worth taking the risk of planning a vacation here.  I always tell them I have a friend who’s a sea captain and he always knows exactly which way the storms are going to go.

No way, Jose! High tide on Back Road around noon today.

I tell them to call back in the morning after I’ve had a chance to ask him about it.”

“Shiver me timbers, lass!” I said, “Surely you’re not referrin’ to me as a weather-savvy sea captain?!” 

“Of course!” she replied.

“Avast there!” I protested, “I’m only a sea captain in the same sense that (then-President) George W. Bush was a C student at Yale!  You need an A captain or at least a B captain!”

AAhhrg!  Time to splice ye main-brace! Pass the rum, shipmate!