ONE YEAR AGO

One year ago I was in Washington D.C. two hundred and fifty miles from my boat as Hurricane Irene traveled up the coast and put BIANKA and the harbor where she was moored on the bad side of the storm. I had spent the previous two days taking off the sails and adding lines and chain to the mooring in the hopes that the boat would survive. I did all I could do and then boarded a train in New York and headed down to DC for a previously planned work gig. It was hard being so far away from the boat and not knowing how it fared. But, everything turned out OK in the end for BIANKA and most of the boats in the  harbor. But, it can not be stressed too often that you need to prepare your boat for such storms as best you can and pay particular attention to try and make sure that lines don't chafe. The video below shows how fast your boat can be gone if you fail to tackle that all important chaffing issue.

BACK ON BOARD POST IRENE

What was unnerving for me as Hurricane Irene approached was the fact because of a work commitment I would be 250 miles away when the storm hit. Not only that, I would not be getting back to the boat for a least two weeks afterward. Happily, I got word fairly soon after the storm had past that BIANKA had survived. That was a relief knowing the boat was OK and my hurricane prep had worked. I tried a few things before I left the boat. Some ideas worked and some ideas need improvement. This is a picture of how I left things at BIANKA's bow before I left the boat:

You can see the anchor has been removed. Two lines the primary and backup are attached to the mooring and are free.  Not easily  seen is the anchor chain on the right roller that drops straight down below the surface of the water and is attached to the mooring chain at a different link than the lines above.  I've already expressed my how I like to have cable ties on board for all sorts of handy reasons. Here I am using them to hold some split tubing in position as some anti chafe protection. Also note I am using the cable ties through the holes in the bow rollers. The plan being to prevent the mooring lines from jumping off the rollers during the storm. I'm using cable ties in the belief they would not chafe the lines like a metal screw would. The cable ties worked as planned or at least the mooring lines never jumped out of the bow rollers. Some of my other ideas not so good.

Returning back to BIANKA after two weeks I found this scene:

Things got pretty twisted forward of the bow rollers. What I don't know is when this all happened. Was during the hurricane or was it during the two weeks of the boat spinning around the mooring before I returned. Both the chain and my anti sail drogue line got twisted up in the mooring lines too.  I did not notice any serious chafe on the mooring lines but, next time I hope to come up with a better plan and hopefully I won't be so far away should another hurricane approach.