David’s Voyage Blog

Publish Date: Sunday, September 7, 2008
Coordinates: 38° 46.31′ N   076° 33.86′ W

We moved Three@Sea from Florida to the Chesapeake Bay to get out of the active hurricane zone. About the middle of last week, however, this was appearing to have been a futile effort: tropical storm (and occasionally huricane) Hanna had turned north from the Caribbean, and was heading for the Carolina coast. Exact predictions were difficult, but the prevailing wisdom was:

• TS Hanna would regain hurricane strength as it moved northward.
• She would likely make landfall along the North Carolina coast as a category 1 hurricane.
• She would then proceed quickly up the coast as a strong tropical storm, passing right over our location in the Chesapeake Bay.

Great! You can run, but you cannot hide! She was expected to be at our location about mid-day Saturday, so our preparations would need to be completed on Friday. I flew home from a business trip early (a Thursday night red-eye), and got back to the boat at about 9am Friday.  Preparations included:

• Lengthen and double all lines.
• Remove exterior items that could be damaged by high winds (e.g., antennas).
• Seal areas that could be the recipient of too much horizontal rain (e.g., exhaust stack, vents, hatch seams).
• Secure the dingy with additional tie-downs and remove its cover.
• Provision for extended power outage and water shortage.
• Have an exit plan if the storm surge became dangerously high.

We completed all of these items by the end of the day, and we felt pretty good about our preparedness. Fortunately, none of it turned out to be necessary:  TS Hanna never did regain hurricane strength.  It did make landfall in North Carolina, but it went far enough inland that it was significantly weakened.  It did pass right over our location on Saturday afternoon, but the winds were relatively mild (25 kts, gusting to 35 kts), and the rain was heavy but short-lived.  Finally, the water level rose to only about one foot above high tide, which was still well below the docks.

By Saturday evening, the sun was coming out, and the water level was dropping. The whole thing was a bit anti-climatic, which was psychologically disappointing, but intellectually very satisfying. I hope all of our future hurricane preparations turn out to be equally untested and unnecessary.  🙂