This week I was out of town for work and Deb was telling me that the weather forecast was calling for 11 inches of rain. Our biggest concern was whether or not the port would leak that we fixed last week and I was looking forward to hearing from Deb how well the repair went. Neither of us even thought about the potential of flooding, but the water rose quite a bit on Friday and was up to the bottom side of the docks when I got back into town. The good news is that the port was not leaking nearly as bad as it had been prior to the repair, but sadly was still leaking in one spot that I would have to seal a bit better.
The water at the bottom of the docks wasn’t too concerning as we have seen the water that high several times in the past.
Typically what has the water rising is a low pressure system sitting in the Gulf of Mexico south west of Louisiana that forces a lot of water up into lake ponchatrain and up the rivers. The counter clockwise rotation of a low pressure system will have the wind blowing north on the eastern side of the low pressure system and if it is south of Louisiana, it also means the water will flow north west which given the shape of Louisiana means it pushes all that water right up and into Lake Pontchatrain.
In this particular case this flooding was not about the low pressure system but rather it was because of all of that rain and was flash flooding due to all of the run off that has flowed into the Abita River, and the Bogue Falaya River which all drain into the Tchefuncte River which is where we are. The water was just going over the dock at about midnight or 1am or so. At 5:45 am this morning, the water was up another foot or so and by noon it was up another foot or so past that.
It is now 9:35pm and the water is receding and is down almost a foot from where it was earlier today, so I have been adjusting the lines back down tighter and the boat is set to drop right back safely into the spot she was at.
I woke up this morning to some voices so I popped my head up out of the hatch this morning and saw one of my boat neighbors pulling my dock box up toward the parking lot. My dock box was starting to float a way and he was getting it up to higher land. I put on some old shoes and bathing suit and joined them in moving things to higher ground. The first few steps on the dock were very odd because you couldn’t see where the edges of the docks were so I was using a boat hook and tapping in front of my as if I were visually impaired.
It worked well and kept me from falling off any of the docks and taking a swim, but I did see 3 other people go into the water today by stepping off the docks accidentally.
We checked on all of the live a-boards and retied a bunch of boats that weren’t tied loose enough to allow them to float higher and many were listing and we saw several with their lines snapped.
We got the girls off the boat and let Chasity play in the water which she enjoyed. She was wearing her rubber boots and just having a grand old time.
The good news is the boat and all of us are safe. We helped our neighbors and once again the live a-board cruising community are great and are always there to help one another.
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