H. Sandy

[marujo_sortudo]

I didn't see this post before Sandy hit, as we were too busy seeking safe harbor, preparing the boat, deciding to abandon ship and find shelter.  Here's a summary of our experiences.

Sandy didn't seem much of a concern at first, but we started monitoring the forecast tracks and looking for likely safe harbors in our area.  We ended up in Port Washington, Long Island, NY and ended up deciding that it was as good of a safe harbor as any before we had a clear idea of how the storm surge would effect the sound.  It's a very welcoming harbor here to transients with moorings that are free for the first day or two and other welcoming services.  Turns out the guy who maintains the moorings here makes them quite tough (we found ourselves sitting on a 1200# mushroom with 40' chain and a longish pendant made of fresh, nicely spliced NE Ropes 3-strand nylon in 9' MLLW.)  When we found out the eye would pass south of us, the forecasts predicted the worst winds to come out of the NE and slowly shift around to the SE over the next day and a half.  In those directions, we had .1 to .2 miles of fetch and only a few moored boats and some empty docks upwind of us.  As such, this seemed like a good place to stay.  I prepared the boat by stripping the genoa, dodger and some other bits, lashing everything else down, putting chafe protection on the mooring pendant, running a chafe protected backup mooring pendant, and putting out a Fortress anchor to the East on 10:1 scope with chafe protection on the rode. 

We were on the fence for over a day about whether to stay with the boat and try and address chafe and/or fend off flotsam. When the forecast refined and a potentially record storm surge was forecast with winds gusting to hurricane force, we decided to leave.  It wasn't an easy decision to make at all, but we decided we didn't want to put any first responders in harms way and we were afraid that the surge might float whole marinas off their pilings.  We packed up some basic supplies of food, clothes, phones, etc. and went ashore with no idea where we would stay.  We had put the call out for lodging on facebook, etc. and luckily we found out some fellow liveaboard friends of ours had an aunt that lived a mere 9 miles away.

(continued)

[marujo_sortudo]

We experienced the storm itself like a lot of folks do on land.  Watched the ridiculous circus of TV coverage, with all the reporters being in all the places people aren't supposed to be and really setting a bad example for them.  Also, apparently, getting a baseball cap blown off their head is an indication of big wind to them.  Clearly no sailors in that bunch.  Then, of course, the power went out.  Cell phones quickly lost coverage and/or battery power.  The wind picked up and branches hit the roof all night long.  We were still in a house surrounded by big trees so we had something to be concerned about.  Of course, I was at least as worried about Mimi Rose's fate, as I'm sure you can imagine.  The last information I had before the Internet and TV died was of ever increasing predictions for the storm surge and I had visions of boats lifting their moorings and marinas drifting free.

It was a couple of days until we were able to make it back to the harbor.  As it was, the harbor faired pretty well.  11 boats were aground and while some marinas had come within about 6" of floating off their main pilings after clearing their finger pilings, none did.  Chafe was the main enemy.  Several of the boats apparently had bow mounted anchors chafe through their pendants.  Some boats on the hard had fallen partially off their jackstands, but were for the most part upright and lightly damaged.  Mimi Rose faired well, too, with only some chafe damage, but mostly in the comestic realm.  Our dinghy was safe where we had stored it on the hard and undamaged.  In all, I feel that we were lucky that the storm surge wasn't another foot and that winds weren't sustained for a longer period or of greater force.  I'm glad we found a relatively sheltered harbor and, at that, a harbor with generally beefy moorings.  I'm also glad that we didn't stay aboard.  As much as I love Mimi Rose, I don't know that there's much more we could have done had we been aboard.

As for the future.  I did take the opportunity to make one more bit of boat gear.  With our bobstay, chafe is even more of a concern for us than it is for most boats.  As such, I decided to build our own, custom storm pendant that we can attach to any mooring if a major storm is coming.  It's very beefy and includes the important addition of plastic tubing over the parts that could be chafed by our bobstay our wooden chocks.  Hopefully, we'll have to wait a long, long time before we have a chance to deploy it.  A couple of days ago, we used our signal flags to spell out "Thank you."  We feel lucky to have survived Sandy with no losses.

[maxiSwede]

@Marujo

Thanks for the first hand account, and good to hear you came out of it as safe and without damage as you did. ;D

[Frank]

Very sad for the loss of lives. A nieghbor sent pics of my cottage a few days ago. Only 2 shingle tabs missing. So far it's stood up to Irene (right through the eye with 120 after) and Sandy. I feel both lucky and blessed. Vickie and I were in NYC a few mths back.....hard to imagine the devestation now!!  Mother nature has power....