Hi, it’s Sarah Graves writing from Eastport, Maine just after noon on Sunday. We’ve had a few torrential downpours from Irene’s outer bands, but so far no big wind. I hope our agility in dodging the hurricane bullet continues, but there’s lots more to come, barometer-wise, so we’ll see. Meanwhile, here are a couple of snapshots from the harbor, the first inside the breakwater.

As you can see, quite a few fishing boats are rafted together at left, and there’s a whale watching schooner tied up to the breakwater itself, at right.

The most remarkable thing in this snapshot and the next one, though, is the height of the tide. We get twenty foot tides here, but this is high even for Eastport.

This next shot is of a concrete platform whose usual height above water level allows local kids to take a long, long drop into the waves — if they dare! Today, it would just be a little plop followed by an icy swim to the floating dock.

The building at left is the one you can see in the distance in the photo above. Low tide when this shot was taken, but today another foot or so of tide — or wind-driven waves — and its floor will be awash.

But it’s not awash yet, and neither are the rest of us here on Moose Island. Meanwhile I can get online and the coffee maker is working, these two things being what writers care about most once the pets and the family are safe. (There’s a big generator on the island, so we’re not often out of power for long, but sometimes it takes a while to go on.)

Finally, just so we don’t forget what Maine is like on better August afternoons, I’ll leave you with this:

I hope all of you are warm and dry on this hurricane Sunday, dodging whatever bullets may be coming your way….oops, the lights just flickered. I’d better post this while I still have an internet connecti