Best of Luck, Guy, With Irene

[longfisher]

Looks like a Cat 3 at least as it nears the Carolinas. I know a lot of you guys live there and north of there.

Some say it'll be your Katrina. Hope not.

So, best of luck with the storm.

LF

[gottaflylee]

Thanks LF. I have been through everyone here since Hazel, don't think this will be our Katrina and other than the aftermath, not to worried about this one...

[Robja]

one of the nicest things I have seen you say LF.

[longfisher]

one of the nicest things I have seen you say LF.

Although I'm always willing to turn up the heat here on politics, hey, why should the Tea Party have all the fun, I've a genuine concern for boats and boatmen of all types, including fishermen. But for my family, I guess that's my only soft spot.

Were it not for the fear that it'd only exacerbate your concerns for the coming storm I'd show you my gallery of Ike pictures where I swear it seemed that virtually every boat in S. Texas was deposited on Interstate 45 (from Galveston to Houston and north) piled one atop another in a hopeless morass. I swear, it was enough make any boater tear up.

What was even worse was how they disposed of those boats to clear the roadway for emergency vehicles. They were cleared with giant forklifts which stabbed their forks clean through the hulls so they could be lifted to the rail and dumped off the overpasses where so many of them came to rest when the flood waters were high. Or, if they settled off the overpasses they were simply pushed beyond the freeway shoulder by bulldozers. The bulldozers then ran over them and smashed them to bits and made an enormous pile of rubble for the front-loaders to load onto dump trucks.

I couldn't stop watching the video of that. It was very unnerving. I sighed for days.

Anyway, I wish all of you the best of luck with your families, your boats and your communities during this storm. I sincerely wish you didn't have to go through it. Even down here with two or three a year some missing and some hitting we never get entirely used to them.

Do please let me know how you fare. And, feel free to post pics of the damage. Just don't expect me to dwell on them for long if they're of wrecked boats.

Sincerely,

LF

[gottaflylee]

LF, just to keep you updated, we are doing fine here so far with just wind and rain. right now, I am watching "As the Wind Blows" a gusty little live movie.

Limbs and and pine coned aer littering the yard but it is still not off shore here yet, still 178 miles from here with gusts to 55 MPH so far. If we don't lose power, I will report back soon.

[longfisher]

I don't want to speak too soon, but in these parts a Cat 1 mostly just waters the grass and fills the reservoirs again.

I know the Weather Channel has been going all out to scare the bejezzers out of folks. But Cat 1? Come on.

I'm hoping the downgrade to Cat 1 means most of you guys are out of the soup.

LF

[longfisher]

Hope well.

LF

[scattered_grass]

We had about 8' of tide and a lot of wind. Didn't get in the house but put about 8 inches in the garage. Luckily the falling trees missed the house. I've been through a few storms and this one was no joke, even at Cat 1. Hope everyone else faired ok..Got some good pics and videos I'll put up later. Thankfully, the boat did just fine in her little "Hurricane Hole".

Actually, there were a good number of homes completely lost in our county so I consider us very lucky. Mom and Dad still don't have power.

[longfisher]

We had about 8' of tide and a lot of wind. Didn't get in the house but put about 8 inches in the garage. Luckily the falling trees missed the house. I've been through a few storms and this one was no joke, even at Cat 1. Hope everyone else faired ok..Got some good pics and videos I'll put up later. Thankfully, the boat did just fine in her little "Hurricane Hole".

Actually, there were a good number of homes completely lost in our county so I consider us very lucky. Mom and Dad still don't have power.

After Ike, we went 13 days without power in 90s and 100s of degrees of heat. With all the water Ike dumped it was also incredibly humid.

We took to dampening sheets and spreading them on the tile in foyer and sleeping virtually naked (bad images, I know, sorry) on the tile.

No power in modern homes that are built to be weatherproof is no joke. I hope your parents do OK. I sure wouldn't want to be in their place right now.

After a few days of sweltering heat, I fixed the carburetor on a small generator I'd had for years in the garage (used it to power fishing lights on the jetties years ago). And we rewired a large "great room" fan near the foyer to move the fetid air around a bit.

But mostly we used the power from the generator to run a freezer with which we made ice for the neighbors. There's lots of retirees in our neighborhood. And, many of them are not well.

You'd be amazed how many people out ages are dependent on injectables for diabetes and other diseases. And, those drugs cannot be allowed to warm or they lose their effectiveness.

It was a hard sell to the kids that other's lives were more important than our comfort. But after a while they got the jist of life's priorities in a disaster and they helped distribute the ice in a kid's wagon each morning.

We also disabled the electronic gate at the yard that holds out boat and brought it home, parked it in the driveway and gave away gasoline from its tank to those elderly who had generators. When the fuel was exhausted I drove about halfway to San Antonio to fill it up again. I never charged anyone a cent for it and refused to dispense it if someone insisted on paying for it.

Lastly, drinking water was a huge problem for about 5 days. I had two old "squad stoves", military type, that I'd picked up at a army surplus shop decades ago that run on gasoline. And, we had a couple of those big pots you boil crawfish in and we boiled water from the tap (not potable after the storm) and gave it away in milk jugs people brought to us. There was no bottled water for about a week.

It was particularly gauling that we had an across the street neighbor, rich guy, who had a 10K Watt genset and he would neither make ice for others nor even allow the couple next door to have an extension cord for a fan. The couple's in their 80's.

He ran his AC units, refrigerator and sat-TV. Another neighbor told that pri*k that had it been a real emergency which went on for some months someone would have put a gun in his mouth for his selfishness and disregard for the welfare of his neighbors. Ordinarily, I'd not tolerate that sort of violence. But I could see why they were steamed at him and I might have turned and looked the other way.

I hope you guys don't have neighbors like that guy.

LF

[tailwalkerfred]

Hi Guys, Thanks for all your support and comments. Except for losing 5 shingles, a few branches, 5' storm surge and power loss for 36 hours we came out fine!
The eye did pass over us Sat AM but we had the roughest time for the boats all day Sat as the 40-70 MPH gusts came right up our creek producing 2-3 foot seas in my back yard! That's the direction with the least protection for our location. All the other directions we have wind blocks of heavily treed homes and forest across the creek.
The boats were unharmed!
Thanks,
Fred
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