We had one of those surreal Robert Altman “frogs raining from the sky” experiences the other night. We’d met some friends for dinner and returned to Nothing Ventured after 11pm. I noticed immediately that the lights on the pontoon were out. Then as we walked to our boat we noticed a strange bubbling sound emanating from a powerboat. Tom stopped to investigate and realized that the sound was in fact air rushing out of the concrete pontoon. Simultaneously, I saw Irv (the retired pilot) coming towards us excitedly babbling that the marina had just practically been drained of water and the boats had been laying on their keels. He couldn’t leave his boat because the passeral had dropped too low. As we stood there, we noticed the water flooding back into the marina at the pace one would fill a bathtub. Except the marina holds millions of liters of water! As we stood there, it quickly became apparent that the water would soon crest the pontoon. In the 3 minutes that we were lollygagging, the passeral for Nothing Ventured rose from Tom’s foot level to his eye level. Since it was now too high for us to use, we ran back to the car just as the water topped the pontoon. By the time we reached the car it was mid-calf. Later we learned that we’d had our first encounter with a tsunami caused by the earthquake in Algeria some 400 miles away! We were reminded of nature’s incredible power as the water continued to fall and rise for several hours. The morning brought aftershocks and smaller tsunamis.