Hurricane Sandy is approaching and as it looks now, it will make landfall somewhere in the central Jersey coast. We had expected to start our trip south on Tuesday, October 30, but instead, Sandy forced us to disassemble our canvas and take down our genoa head sail along with tying everything down and securing the boat to the dock. We moved out of our normal slip in Shipwright Harbor Marina in Deale, MD, to a slip on the more protected side of the marina and have deployed almost every line and bumper we own. We would have hauled out but the boat lift here requires you to un-rig your back stay. Ours is connected to our SSB radio antenna and is a real pain to un-do. As there was little time to work on it we opted for moving instead. We will not get any wave action in this spot but the docks and pilings are not very tall so, we are concerned about any significant storm surge and what happens if the water goes above the pilings. The winds Monday night/Tuesday morning are predicted to be around 40 to 45 mph with gusts to 60 mph That stinks but it’s not too bad if there are no waves. It’s just that variations of this forecast will be going on for parts of three days. Most hurricanes usually seem to come and go in a day.
Our plan, as of Sunday evening, is to ride out the storm on board Mary T tonight, and then contemplate whether to stay on board Monday night or go to a house that our live-aboard friend, Jack from Motel L, somehow arranged for. Reassuring words came from our slip neighbor who said he rode out hurricane Isabel in this location and had no problems.
Other than Sandy’s expected visit, our October in Maryland was fun. We’ve had lots of visits with friends and enjoyed some wonderful autumnal weather. Amy has been hard at work on “Red Dot” and I’ve been fixing things on the boat. We just learned of a new problem the other day when we moved from our regular slip to our hurricane slip–the chartplotter no longer works. We have no clue as it was working fine when we got back from Maine. Oh well, it gives me something to do besides hurricane prep.