Hurricane Irene

Ominous clouds began appearing early this afternoon with bringing rain and moderate winds

 YESTERDAY:

Preparing for Hurrican Irene. We're taking Me Voy to a neighboring marina with floating piers. That seems the safest way to go, since our first option of hauling way unavailable due to lack of space in the yards. That leaves us with only one boat to take care of , Tara, which will have long lines extending to the neighboring trees. We're really protected here in our spot, both in terms of our boat and the location of our marina.Its surounded on all sides by trees and buildings, on all sides that is except the South. Like an old timer here said, it will be a battle between Northeasterly winds and rain, and the Southwestern surge pushing water up the river from the Bay. Several people have been here for the last hurricane in the late 90's, Isabelle, and talk of a very strong surge that kept coming in from the Chesapeake. Coming and coming. Last time they had no power for 13 days, but that turns ou tot be only because no one reported the outage. Anyway we're stocking up on some food, fuel, getting extra dock lines, replacing our haylards with messangers, and generally taking action as if this is going be a bad one. The good thing is there is a great community of people here, of all ages and experience levels that makes it a good place to be. In general Baltimore seems like a safe place tucked up into the mainland and like I mentioned already our marina is very well situated especially against Northerly winds.

TODAY:
Due to unrelated issues we have no internet, so here we are at Dunkin Donuts, squeezing in some online time. Yesterday was a flurry of activity. A long 13 hour day of preparing. We took Me Voy to a very swanky marina and tied her to floating piers.We're staying aboard Tara and waiting to see how this develops.  We are hoping that we have over prepared, and judging from the latest forecast it that seems probable. As of now the rain is pouring and we are expecting winds between 35-40 with gusts of up to 65. Thanks to one of our neighbors I am obsessively humming "come on Irene...", you know the song right?