The Kennemer Family: Hurricane Blue Angels

We had high hopes for a fun fun weekend out on the water, watching the Blue Angels Air Show, swimming, and having a good time with friends.... I think we achieved this, but in a different way than we planned!

We took Ben's new boat and had Garrett & Holley, Katie (we missed you being there Jody!), and Harper, Ben, and I on board. We packed all kinds of food and snacks, drinks, a big island float, and were ready for a long day! Basically, once we got to the Pensacola Bay, tied up with William's boat, hopped in the water and started swimming.... the BOTTOM dropped out of the sky and a full blown thunderstorm attacked us. We all huddled down on the floor of the boat, as close to the center console, without touching metal, as we could get... but escaping the rain was impossible. It felt like needles all over our bodies. Lightning was striking all around us, constantly, seemingly hitting things all around us. Ambulance sirens were going off, but we had no idea what emergencies they were going to. A few of us actually were shocked a few times, but we weren't sure what it was from. We were all scared to death, but what could we do? There were hundreds of other boats of all sizes out there with us, in the same position, with nowhere to go to escape. One direction was straight into the storm, and the other was going with it, which would mean we would have double the storm front. I think when it started we thought it would "blow over" soon... but that turned into over an hour with no end in sight. Ben kept wanting to pull anchor and drive home (close to an hour away), but by staying put, we were surrounded by other boats, with metal higher in the sky than we had. Also, I think that it would have been impossible to navigate through the whiteout, needlepoint rain, and misery. Anyway, we eventually were able to head home after the rain and lightning let up a little bit.

So we had about 45 minute of sunny fun before it all started. Needless to say, the Blue Angels didn't fly... it was a memorable adventure, and we had alot of laughs (despite the scared to death moments). At one point we laughed at how we wished we had pictures to document it, but didn't want to ruin my camera by pulling it out (EVERYTHING on the boat got soaking wet... and I mean EVERYTHING). Well, I found a disposable camera a few months ago in a box from way back in high school probably (before digital cameras came out). There were about 15 pictures left on it so I brought it with me this weekend to use them up and get it developed. Well I didn't care of it was destroyed by the rain, so we took it out and used the remaining pics on our adventure! I can't wait to get the camera developed tomorrow and see what turns out. But for now, these are the pics I took before and after the rain!

on our way to Pensacola