Haboob... now use it in a sentence.

"Nice haboobs!" doesn't count.  A haboob is a dust storm, carried by intense winds.  We've seen them in the southwest, often looking like a "wall of dirt" coming at you.  Well, the blowing dirt down here has been relentless that past week, but finally died down today.  We still had winds around 20, but the dirt and sand it in were apparently taking the day off.  After the past week, I'd be surprised if there was any topsoil left in Mexico. ;-)

So, today, we took on cleaning the boat.  It seemed pointless the past few days.  The cockpit of the boat is facing into the wind, so it caught the worst of the dirt...

Lift the rug back there, and you can see the difference...

And down the sides of the cockpit...

Yeah, that's a shop vac in the right side of the image above.  Rather than create mud in the cockpit, I started off the cleaning by vacuuming the boat.  No, not the rug; the fiberglass non-skid, the Sunbrella seat cushions, the bimini, the cabin top... any place that might run back into the cockpit.  The rest of the boat can be rinsed off into the water.  It took over an hour to get the vacuuming done before washing the boat.

Our neighbor, Joe, saw me working on the boat and said, "The wife and and I felt really bad for you - you worked so hard on getting that boat shined up a couple weeks ago..."

"Mother Nature giveth and taketh away," I said.  "The boat is going to get grubby with the long haul we have ahead of us, but I'll get her looking pretty again."

With the boat done, we went to work on other stuff on our deck and dock... it's all just as grubby.  We put away stuff we aren't using and started securing the place in case of a hurricane.

Joan is the organizer, and had gone through a bunch of our cruising gear (extra anchors, lines, etc), so we could say "Yea or nay" on what goes on this trip.  We'll see how much space is available as we make the final cuts.