Having a lot larger than most lifted boats I see around here, I ended up with a problem in that the forty-foot pilings we used when we rebuilt the cover from the Hurricane Michael-destroyed 20-foot tall hooped vinyl cover meant for the trawler, which only needed 30-foot pilings, allowed us to go up only so high with the new metal covered wooden roof. To make up a bit for the lack of overall height, we designed it so the boat's hardtop lifts well up into the structure which means there is a rising water level at which it is no longer possible to get it out from under there. That point, well marked with a horizontal piece of PVC at the end of the pier, was reached before dawn today. After living here 20 years, I can pretty well figure to within about a foot where storm surges will be, but this was the first time I had to think about it with a boat in a lift under a hard roof. It was nerve wracking as the highest rise approached with a foot plus remaining before she would have floated and another foot before contact with the roof. I second guessed myself all over the place about not just moving yesterday to the open slip alongside the shed, but watching these seas wash in here tonight with the still quite strong winds over a two-mile fetch makes me glad I didn't have to put the production boat cleats an pilings of unknown quality to the test. With the seas well over the pier, there would have been no safe way to board the boat to adjust anything, and a loose or broken line to the windward pilings would have meant a boat bouncing on the shorter piles of the downwind pier. Decisions, decisions. I have another plan for the next big surging storm, which judging by what's going on in the Bay of Campeche right now will be real soon.
Apparently some of the big boats which broke free in Orange Beach pulled or broke the pilings they were moored to drifting miles before being stranded.