Hurricane Florence

The mangroves are your friend, marinas not necessarily so.
Stay safe

We were planning our drive south, Maryland to Florida, via I-95 Thursday and Friday. Instead, going to wait it out. May try it early next week.
God bless all in harms way!

New track possible, will come in around Wilmington, then head south raking along the coast. Parents house is in Myrtle Beach, which the hurricane will now come over their house. Their expected wind speeds went from 50 to 100 mph overnight. They are 25 feet up from sea level and 5 miles from the coast.


https://weather.com/safety/hurricane/news/2018-09-12-hurricane-florence-forecast-southeast-us

Right now.....anything is possible as I think even the model guidance is grasping at straws for consistency.

Those praying for a miracle are getting it....keep praying.

Great piece of advice from Passagemaker this morning. If you are evacuating, take your EPIRB and PLBs with you, the Coast Guard will be busy enough.

For NC, Looks like a lot of water will be pushed up into New Bern, etc... that is where water goes I suppose, up a creek, being forced up by the hurricane and rain.

So when you go further inland, the storm surge gets worse than along the coast? And they kind fool you with the wording, storm surge is not including tides, so you have to add in the tide to surge to get a true height of water.


Daughter used to work at the hospital in Greenville, now is in Oregon. Greenville is flat land, like a pancake.
https://weather.com/safety/hurricane/news/2018-09-11-hurricane-florence-south-carolina

To those in the paths predicted....don't forget to prep for your furry/feathered family. Grab a couple weeks of food for them today if you can. Even if you are evacuating. It'll only add to everyone's stress (including your pet's) if you have to start feeding them something different. I.E. it could get messy if they develop diarrhea particularly on the road or in a hotel where you can't get them outside at a second's notice.

Live Cam
New Bern Grand Marina in Craven County North Carolina has multiple online webcams. I plan to check and see how they are fairing over next few days, if they actually stay online.

This sucks. At 6am my local news said it would make landfall around North Myrtle Beach and head straight for my area, Spartanburg, SC. I hope it spins itself out and loses power before coming ashore. This is reminding me to much of Hugo in the late 80's.

https://youtu.be/XK5PQdbPR3s

Almost too late now to escape by water.

menzies said:

Great piece of advice from Passagemaker this morning. If you are evacuating, take your EPIRB and PLBs with you, the Coast Guard will be busy enough.

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Couldn't you just turn them off?

And wrap them in tin foil....that was one of the last suggestions from NOAA.

Also suggested when shilling the unit.

ben2go said:

This sucks. At 6am my local news said it would make landfall around North Myrtle Beach and head straight for my area, Spartanburg, SC. I hope it spins itself out and loses power before coming ashore. This is reminding me to much of Hugo in the late 80's.

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Very similar to Hugo in it's threat to SC. May be less force and more rain and this is on top of already soaked land.

Just think back to 2015 and the early October floods. The roads were impassable for days.

In many ways this is very similar to Harvey.

The official forecast is very much like the Euro model was yesterday.

Also concern for the NC mountains and mudslides.

If you follow local news you find unique situations in each community. Hospital in Myrtle Beach already being evacuated. Little River water and sewage to be shut off in a couple of hours. One more ferry transporting from Ocracoke. Prison in evacuation zone not being evacuated and concerns over the many hazardous waste sites about which FEMA had no real comment other than mediation afterwards.

At this point, most areas of SC and NC face potential between bad and catastrophic. There are not many coastal areas or even eastern areas that won't be significantly impacted. For some, it will be storm surge, others wind, and others fresh water flooding. I see a sense of relief in Virginia and further north, but that's all a matter of degree. Many areas that are not going to be struck now by a hurricane are still looking at the possibility of a slow moving storm passing through and dropping a lot of rain on them.

I see one positive and that is the earlier start of evacuation. SC was evacuating even when official forecasts had greater impact on NC. Now, a concern, are people evacuating far enough. Not sure anyone knows what that is. However, we saw many during Irma who moved to Orlando and Jacksonville and experienced tremendous flooding in those areas.

One thing I haven't seen as much of as we're use to is shelters. They're the hope of those who wait too long to move as far as they'd like, but also for those who simply can't afford to evacuate as they wish. Eastern NC and SC both have a lot of poor people for whom fuel and transportation may not be affordable, motels are not, and restaurants are not. I see where Coast RTA is using their buses for some level of evacuation in the Myrtle Beach and Conway area, but the sidebar to that is they're ending their evacuation services early this afternoon.

Hurricanes like this take a huge toll on a lot of people and can't be measured only by dollars of damage or even loss of lives.

Yes. It's looking bad. I hope for no loss of life.

Looking at the National Weather Service data against another report I heard of 80'+ swells inside the hurricane. Nice site with clickable data points. Not sure I believe the 80 footers, but they are having 50 foot seas based on NWS info:



https://digital.weather.gov/?zoom=3...TTTTT&region=7&element=9&mxmz=true&barbs=true

If you are so inclined, you can donate to the Red Cross before the storm hits. Their website allows you to specifically designate your donation be for Florence.

Also, they need blood and platelets.

I subscribe to a private weather service. Yesterday they brought up the south trend. Today looks like official sources are talking a southern movement.


Today service I use has put GA in the mix for impact, with mention of possible NE FL.


As we all know, there are no absolutes - all of this is just "forecast" - not actual. Best course is to be prepared whether you are in NC or SC.

After watching some video of people waiting in stores for hours for bottled water deliveries I thought I'd add my 2¢...and that's probably what its worth.

for 99.9% of our country water from the tap in your house is perfectly drinkable. Get some "clean" containers (5 gallon buckets, used milk/water jugs, whatever. scrub them clean and rinse with a mild bleach/water solution. Fill from faucet at your house and.......VOILA gallons and gallons of drinking water. Also if you are staying, Fill your trash cans and bathtubs. You can use this water to flush your toilets.
you can also buy a Brita (or similar) filtered water pitcher. These will make your tap water taste just like store bought bottled water. If going to have to store/use water for drinking more than a couple days you can add a small amount of bleach(unscented) to your bulk containers and essentially sterilize it. You can look up how much bleach to use per gallon of water.

No real reason to waste time waiting in lines for hours to spend boat bucks for something you can get at home in a few minutes for pennies.

We always started keeping containers at the beginning of summer in anticipation of a storm knocking out power/water.

twiisted71 said:

After watching some video of people waiting in stores for hours for bottled water deliveries I thought I'd add my 2¢...and that's probably what its worth.

for 99.9% of our country water from the tap in your house is perfectly drinkable. Get some "clean" containers (5 gallon buckets, used milk/water jugs, whatever. scrub them clean and rinse with a mild bleach/water solution. Fill from faucet at your house and.......VOILA gallons and gallons of drinking water. Also if you are staying, Fill your trash cans and bathtubs. You can use this water to flush your toilets.
you can also buy a Brita (or similar) filtered water pitcher. These will make your tap water taste just like store bought bottled water. If going to have to store/use water for drinking more than a couple days you can add a small amount of bleach(unscented) to your bulk containers and essentially sterilize it. You can look up how much bleach to use per gallon of water.

No real reason to waste time waiting in lines for hours to spend boat bucks for something you can get at home in a few minutes for pennies.

We always started keeping containers at the beginning of summer in anticipation of a storm knocking out power/water.

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A significant percentage of the time, local water is not potable after a hurricane or flooding. Also, used containers, water bottles or milk jugs, have a greatly increased risk of bacteria developing. Bottled water is not going to cost you boat bucks. To me, it's worth the expenditure.

A co-worker in FLL shot me an email with two good hurricane tips:

1. Buy a Brita water pitcher and filter rain water with it. In our case, we have a 27,000 pool, but that not withstanding, there is a constant source of water provided by the storm.
2. get some Sterno cans. While they can't cook steak, they will heat up ravioli or cans of green beans.

We followed both.

So the storm turned a little. Yesterday was VERY VERY scary. We went BACK to our marina to double and triple check her. We added more lines and taped down everything (including the windshield wipers). We left thinking we would never see our boat in one piece again. Moreover, the couple in the next slip with the 50' Hatteras triple cabin had not shown up to hurricane tie AT ALL. There is no finger pier between us and them. We knew that if that beast had broken loose, it would beat poor little Skinny Dippin' to death!


Anyway, when we drove away we knew we had done as much as we could. The marina staff and the will of the storm we would have to trust. Once we arrived home, we heard that the county the marina is in issued a mandatory evacuation! Well, so much for that. With nobody to tend the lines when the water went up, every boat would yank the cleats off the docks and nothing would survive. Period. We were heartbroken.

Today, it looks like it may be turning away from us. The marina staff has told us that they WILL be staying and, for now at least, we feel slightly better about the chances she will survive. Still, I feel bad that our good fortune may be someone's bad. We'll see what happens next. It's turned more than once... it will probably turn again.

I'd go one step further with the water jugs. Frozen gallon jugs will keep your fridge or freezer cool for a while. If you are lucky enough to get power back in a few days, you might not have to toss everything in your fridge.

Tom.B

If you're still in Northwest Creek you're in good hands...I was there for Mathew and while each storm is different I was very impressed with the work the staff did to keep all safe. Key was running long lines for each boat across the fairway to pilings on the other side to keep boats in their spot (fore & aft) for a big surge. They took all the electrical meters off the pedestals and when I got back to the boat 3 days later they had all back together and operational.

Cheers

Bryan

It is incredible to think how powerful is a storm surge of flowing water.
I was out at our slip today, added some lines and put out bumpers. And I was looking up and imagining a wall of water high above my head and it was incomprehensible how anything like that could happen, but it does. Such an height of flowing water and high winds, nothing at our marina could survive, especially since the docks are not floating.

Lines would snap, boats would smash each other and pull out the docks, the motion of the water would rip the pilings right out of the sea bed.
Floating docks can float right off their pilings. Breakwaters that are too low let in huge breaking waves into the harbors.
Simply catastrophic damages, everything swept away into a jumbled mass of debris, which everyone can see happens as their are plenty of pictures from other bad storms.

At the marina I am at now, Hurricane Isabel lifted and carried away boats, and for a long time, years, one sat forlorn on the far shore high and dry.

BandB said:

A significant percentage of the time, local water is not potable after a hurricane or flooding. Also, used containers, water bottles or milk jugs, have a greatly increased risk of bacteria developing. Bottled water is not going to cost you boat bucks. To me, it's worth the expenditure.

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And this is why we have different boats to choose from. Everyone has different wants and backgrounds.

If folks are able to easily get it, so be it. I'm talking about for those who are in areas that have already sold out and they aren't likely to get another delivery, or they have to stand around in a line for hours hoping there will still be some left by the time their turn comes.

I said to fill containers BEFORE the storm gets there, NOT afterwards. I grew up in the country on well water that had to be run through a filter and softener. We caught rainwater for drinking water because even though our well water was safe to drink if often had a not so great taste.
I also said to rinse containers with bleach water before use and to treat stored water with bleach. These are time proven methods for dealing with somewhat iffy water---let alone US tap water sources. If someone would rather hope that the 1-2 cases of water they managed to grab at the 7-11 Kwik Pak store will last them a week or possibly more, or not be able to use their toilet during the DAYS of rain/wind this storm is forecast to deliver, more power to them.

For those who have freshwater tanks on their boats but NOT a watermaker. Do you not treat your tank? What do you use? I've always used plain old household bleach, and we let it set for atleast a day to let the smell dissipate somewhat, and then were perfectly comfortable to use it for cooking, coffee, brushing teeth, and yes drinking, of course we'd rather be able to run it through a Brita pitcher to make the taste less bleachy. And this was on a 35 year old boat's water tank!
Many cruisers catch rainwater run-off from decks and cabin tops and funnel it into freshwater tanks....to drink. These folks can be at sea for weeks/months or in 3rd world areas where you don't want tap water to enter your body at any cost short of death.. They treat their tanks after each natural "fill".

Benthic2 said:

I'd go one step further with the water jugs. Frozen gallon jugs will keep your fridge or freezer cool for a while. If you are lucky enough to get power back in a few days, you might not have to toss everything in your fridge.

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Exactly.
And if you have a really good ice chest (or several) you can pack food in layers for use in meals and work your way through them in a way that you can have "fresh" meals vs having to go canned goods almost immediately due to opening the fridge freezer and losing its cool.

twiisted71 said:

And this is why we have different boats to choose from. Everyone has different wants and backgrounds.

I said to fill containers BEFORE the storm gets there, NOT afterwards. I grew up in the country on well water that had to be run through a filter and softener. We caught rainwater for drinking water because even though our well water was safe to drink if often had a not so great taste.
I also said to rinse containers with bleach water before use and to treat stored water with bleach. These are time proven methods for dealing with somewhat iffy water---let alone US tap water sources. If someone would rather hope that the 1-2 cases of water they managed to grab at the 7-11 Kwik Pak store will last them a week or possibly more, or not be able to use their toilet during the DAYS of rain/wind this storm is forecast to deliver, more power to them.

For those who have freshwater tanks on their boats but NOT a watermaker. Do you not treat your tank? What do you use? I've always used plain old household bleach, and we let it set for atleast a day to let the smell dissipate somewhat, and then were perfectly comfortable to use it for cooking, coffee, brushing teeth, and yes drinking, of course we'd rather be able to run it through a Brita pitcher to make the taste less bleachy. And this was on a 35 year old boat's water tank!
Many cruisers catch rainwater run-off from decks and cabin tops and funnel it into freshwater tanks....to drink. These folks can be at sea for weeks/months or in 3rd world areas where you don't want tap water to enter your body at any cost short of death.. They treat their tanks after each natural "fill".

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I have a 70 gallon fresh water SS tank, and all copper lines. Honestly, the water is always good. I have never had bad water. I fill it with city water which has residual chlorine, and those copper pipes kill all bacteria and viruses. I never have to treat that water or filter it.

sdowney717 said:

I have a 70 gallon fresh water SS tank, and all copper lines. Honestly, the water is always good. I have never had bad water. I fill it with city water which has residual chlorine, and those copper pipes kill all bacteria and viruses. I never have to treat that water or filter it.

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How frequently do you use it? Do you drain the tank when you know it will be a while before you'll use it again? Do you let your boat set for weeks/months at a time? Our boat could go for months without us needing the freshwater system as we used it for day trips far more than overnighting. Again everyone is different.

When I lived in the Keys, I'd see probably a dozen "boaties" a year come into the hospital with some form of live-aboard mold/fungus issue. You get so many who fall for the romantic idea of "chucking it all and running away to the islands and living on a boat". Problem is they don't realize that when you live-aboard you become responsible for many hygienic things that you took for granted living in a house with a city water supply and septic system, not to mention the oppressive heat and humidity that makes boats living on the hook like Nature's own pitre dish!

I could see the power outages lasting a long time. With the soggy ground and high winds lots of trees will be blowing over. That will obviously take down power lines and also close roads so repair crews can't get around as well.

Thinking there it will be tough to find marinas able to pump fuel during the trip south this fall.


At this point, the least of any of our worries. We need to get through the next few days safely.

J105 said:

Key was running long lines for each boat across the fairway to pilings on the other side to keep boats in their spot (fore & aft) for a big surge.

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Unfortunately, the owner has stopped the staff from doing this any more. He argues it never did any good. Lines would stretch and not keep the boats off the docks. We are all a little pissed about that, but what can ya’ do? Personally, I think he just got tired of paying overtime for the staff to rig it and take it all down after. He’s a bit of a jerk like that.

They still pull the meters and breakers though.