Glad to hear that all of you guys are okay. All 3 of my kids were up on the bridge with me as we were passing through the narrow channel in front of East Hampton Point Marina and we thought the storm was going to pass north of us out on the Sound . We could see the storm as we came across Gardiner's Bay on the return from Block Island and whille it looked severe , it seemed to be traveling north along the Sound , boy was I wrong. As we passed East Hampton Point my oldest asked me for the camera . I said what do you want that for? and she said to photograph the black clouds . I looked over my shoulder and immediately knew that we were in deep sh-t . The orders went out for the admiral to batten down the hatches , the kids to zip up the bridge curtains , and we executed a hard to starboard turn and made a run to get through the mooring field to clear water. The storm broke on us in the middle of the moorings ,and visibilty dropped to zero in a millisecond. My 9 year old became my eyes with her face against the enclosure to watch for mooring buoys and we finally made it to clear harbor space where we eventually turned blindly 180 degrees , keeping the bow to windward and just maintaining steerage. At this point it was no steering with the helm, just throttle or not . We had waves in the harbor that I would estimate were between 8 to 10 feet in height. We plunged down into some huge holes. Then the rain eased up a bit and the lightning started . By the we had made it over to the ski area on the west side of the harbor when all of a sudden a lightning bolt struck the water about 6 or 8 feet off our starboard beam and physically lifted me and the kids a foot up out of our seats. Down below ,the admiral was in the galley and the crack of the bolt made her think that the lightning had struck the porthole in the galley. The lightning was the most intense and the closest I have ever experienced. Gotta love having those 30' aluminum lightning rods on either side of the salon. Ha Ha . To top off all of that excitement , when we finally got in to the dock we found that the top of a big oak tree had come down and gone right through the roof of my wife's Volvo. PS: The worst part of all was that my parents and sister and brother-in-law had arrived at the dock an hour ahead of us and were watching out the windows , helplessly witnessing our entire ordeal. Needless to say , they were scared out of their wits to see us just disappear into the wall of water . Again I Say " God Bless Hatteras " a lesser boat would not have survived .
