Well the Great Maine Expedition of 2010 is drawing to a close – I’ve got pictures and updates coming but we’re a bit more focused on the unwanted visitor coming up he East Coast…
From this picture, and since the state of Maine just went under just went under Tropical Storm Watch, looks like we’re going to get a bit of a pasting.
Our storm strategy, after much deliberation over moving from our current location in Northeast Harbor on Mount Desert Island to someplace West (away from the storm in theory and closer to home) or South (closer to home), is tha we decided that discretion is the better part of valor and leaving a well built mooring in a fairly protected harbor on the edge of the storm’s path for a more uncertain location didn’t seem wise.
So the decision was made and would NOT bring the boat back Labor Day weekend as originally planned but we would leave it here and I would bring it back later with friends. Our thinking was that going West to someplace like Portland wasn’t adding any real protection and it wasn’t getting us that much closer to home. No matter what we weren’t making it back in time for school by water so making a long trip in the wrong direction for a negligible increase in security made no sense. Going South seemed counter intuitive since that was into the storm and we’d have to leave several days before the storm to be assured of avoiding it. It could also mean chopping the vacation in half over a threat that might never materialize, and in general Maine seems to take fewer hurricane hits that RI.
Besides, it would give us a couple of additional days here on Mount Desert Island which is an awesome spot. But that wasn’t really a consideration…just a bonus and the subject of another post anyway.
So here we are in Maine battening down for the storm. well not battening much yet, it’s not due until late Friday / early AM Saturday so we will batten a bit this morning then probably play for another day and finish battening down tomorrow. I don’t want to spend the next day tripping over sails and canvas down below until I have to.
If you are on the various e-mail lists for on line marine suppliers (I am…not surprisingly) you’ve been getting breathless “get your chafe gear NOW!!!” e-mails for the last couple of days. So yesterday I headed over to Hamilton Marine in Southwest Harbor, which was a pleasant dinghy ride through porpoise infested waters I made with my son. Again…another post.
Going there I prepared Kathy for the worst: some new dock lines maybe, snubbers, chafe gear, etc. I got walking with the fellow in the store who had all the appearance of a local lobsterman that ducked off the boat for a minute to sell me some gear. After talking with him about where I was and what I had on the boat his recommendation for “the absolute best chafe protection” that everyone locally uses? A roll of Gorilla Tape – total cost $9.99 plus tax.
Somehow I feel I’m not doing enough, not having come away with several hundred dollars worth of additional protection for the boat. Nothing but a $10 roll of tape just seems so…minimalist. But I’ve reviewed my plans with some other local folks and they seem to agree that attaching four BIG dock lines to the mooring while taping them heavily where they touch anything combined with stripping off anything loose that can catch wind will leave us as safe as can possibly be.
The major decision left is to whether the conditions will be bad enough that we should watch the potential destruction of our boat from a hotel on land or stay on board to monitor things and adjust chafe gear as needed. I’m thinking that cutoff is somewhere around 50 knots of predicted wind…
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As a side note…it was not at all amusing to me that in all the concern for the storm here and now I’d completely overlooked the small matter of my house which is about 100 feet from the water back in RI. Fortunately my parents are there to remind me that maybe I should think about that too. Yes, please tie down the porch furniture so it doesn’t fly through the picture windows if you get a minute!
It looks like RI will take a harder hit than Maine will since the storm will probably be a Category 2 when it grazes RI and be down to a Category 1 or even Tropical Storm by the time it gets here. So it’s better that Evenstar is here but not so great for the house.
