Lighthouse dawn to dusk - or, Ditch the Lens Shade

Hello All,
As you all may, or may not know I love photographing lighthouses. Last February, I photographed the above lighthouse in pre-dawn light, through evening glow. But, the lighthouse is here just for eye candy. I wanted to bring up the infamous lenshade, or lenshood that come as an accessory with so many lenses now-a-days.
So, here I was, just as planned, late evening, catching the last of the sun's rays and the alpenglow on the lighthouse and the rocks. A gorgeous, cold, February evening, I had my trusty Nikon 17-55 F2.8 monster lens with the equally monsterous lenshood mounted on my D300; Tripod, remote release, bubble level, and mirror lock-up.
I'm ready to rock and roll as the sun is setting fast, and the light is fading.
So, here I am firing away. It's cold, it's blustery, and getting colder as the sun sets. Luckily, I check the LCD every now and then just to make sure things are going as planned -- I'm not a "chimper" I don't look at every image--this takes away from shooting time and/or I'll miss "the" shot.
What did I see? I see that my images were soft. I wouldn't call them blurry, OK. They were blurry, at 100% on the LCD. Hmm. What's going on here? Light is fading fast. Color is fading faster. What the heck is happening? I run through my mental checklist again. Mirror lock-up: CHECK. Tripod head locked down: CHECK. Camera strap secured so it doesn't blow in the wind and whack the tripod legs: CHECK. Remote release tightly wound: CHECK. I took another shot, and this one was just plain ugly blurry. Time to stop and re-group. Hands are frozen (I can't shoot with gloves), light is fading, alpenglow starting to light up the rocks and I'm still not getting good shots! I walked away from the rig for a moment, and then walked around the entire camera. As I'm walking around the front of the camera, I hear, yes hear the wind rustling THROUGH the lenshood!! It was catching the wind and acting like a sail slightly vibrating the lens, and camera during my long exposures! How about that!? I had attached the lenshood earlier in the afternoon to cut down on a bit of lens flare.
I removed the lenshood, shot one exposure and: PROBLEM SOLVED. What a weird thing to have happen but it just goes to show you that the smallest, most trivial things you may never ever think about will cause you to miss a shot.
Lesson learned this day: K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Stooopid. If you don't need it take it off, stop it, or shut it down; it'll only get in your way.