Storm prep
Sep 19th, 2005 by Sandra
Well, it looks like Tropical Storm Rita is going to become Hurricane Rita in time to whack the upper Texas Gulf Coast, where I live in somewhat spare comfort aboard a 38′ Bertram motor yacht.
I’ve already bought a new set of secondary docklines and am headed out now in search of super-duty duct tape for sealing the windows and doors. We won’t stay aboard during the storm, but we’ll lash Dorothea down and hope for the best.
This has kinda shot my plans for meeting my deadline to hell. But hey, they’re talking about a voluntary evacuation of Galveston Island so this one may be important. I don’t sneeze at a Category 1 and Rita’s projected to be a 3 by the time she reaches us.
So I’ve started gathering up the first stuff we need to gather up: insurance and ownership papers, licenses, Dorothea’s surveys, my one album of family photos my Aunt Geneva put together for me a few years ago. I’ll have to decide which clothes it makes sense to take with us if we have to leave — the suits would be nice to save, but in reality we live in shorts and t-shirts. And I’ll have to dig the cat carrier out of the lazarette behind the aft deck to prepare for evacuating Joe Muggins.
In the meantime, my wireless internet service provider is going up and down like a seesaw. It’s not affected by the weather right now, but I’m frustrated with not being able to count on the service to check the weather.
We’re likely to be affected by the storm surge which, if high enough, will drown our boat while she’s moored to her fixed pilings. David Pascoe has a killer plan for keeping a boat as secure as possible in her slip during a hurricane, but I doubt we’ll get to use two contiguous slips to cross-tie Dorothea in the middle.
Ah well. Now I’m off to the grocery store to see what stuff I can get before there’s a run on garbage bags and bottled water….