This year has been a crazy hurricane season, to say the least. Harvey to the West, Irma to the East, I feel like I am stuck in the middle. So it was not a real surprise when Nate was coming straight down the middle of the lane for the strike into New Orleans area.
Now lucky for us, it changed a little bit and went east of us, which means we were on the good side of the hurricane in the northern hemisphere and we were west of it.
That doesn’t mean we weren’t preparing for it a few days ahead of the storm. Here is what we did to prepare, keeping in mind we are in a pretty good hurricane hole marina. It has a lot of trees around it, is far enough up a river to avoid some of the violent surges even though we see rising water.
- Removed the Sun Awning from the boat. We have a cover that goes from the Bow sprit all the way back to the mizzen mast which puts it at about 44 feet long and 15 feet wide. (Quiet the sail to leave up)
- We decided not to take the sails off the boat, but rather wrap the sail covers with a classic wrapping knot. I start with a bowline around the mast and bulk of the sail holding it forward against the mast. I then spiral around the boom and sail with a half knot at each wrap before moving 2 feet aft on the boom and repeating.
- I always tie the booms down to cleats as well so the main sheet is not the only thing holding the boom in place
I wrapped the roller furling (since this was projected to be Cat 1 or maybe 2, I decided to leave the roller furling up and had it wrapped well, however anything more and the sails would have all come down- We removed the biminis and stored all canvas below.
- Water tanks were all filled
- Generator tested and ensure it was ready to go if needed (and have extra fuel if needed. On one of our boats we have a gas generator so filled gas cans to be able to run power if needed)
- Double tied all dock lines by running additional lines to different security points on the boat and docks so a broken line or pilon doesn’t free the entire boat.
- Remove or tie down anything that is on deck that could become a projectile.
- Raise or rig “Banger Boards” that prevent the boat from floating over on top of the dock if the water were to flood above them.
With all this prep, in the end, we didn’t see much wind and frankly, we had some surge but have seen worse during non-named storms. We were lucky and now are just putting everything back the way it was since the storm came and went with no incident.
We also added some layers of fiberglass to the deck where the core was replaced and are happy with the solid repair. See the video below.
Lastly, we celebrated a great American and man in Daniel Dain Senior. Dan passed away and had a lovely military funeral with a 21 gun salute, flag folding ceremony and a presentation of the flag to the next of Kin.