D-Day! ! ! ! ! ! !

SHIP'S LOG:

Irene arrived but thankfully, she did not live up to her billing. She was not more than a big tropical storm when she graced us with her presence, but that was more than enough.

I arose at 5am when the power went out and the emergency lights snapped on with an electrical crack that snapped me out of a dead sleep. The winds were probably only around 40 but it was enough to cause some wire or cable somewhere to snap and plunged the whole of New London in to darkness . . . well at least it cut the power. It wouldn't return til about 7pm.

My first conscious thought was to check ABISHAG (she was still there) and then to go off and find coffee. Nothing was opened in anticipation of the "hurricane," but I eventually found a Cumberland Farms that was opened and got coffee. By the time I git back to the club, people started arriving to watch the storm and their boats. The most serious part of the storm whacked us from 9 til 1pm during the high tide. Sadly the club lost three boats. One was a small racing type sailboat of about 19 feet which just tuned turtle and floated upside down. It is still there as we speak. The other two loses where much sadder.

One was HERON, a beautiful 29 foot Pearson which became disconnected from it mooring( possibly chaffing through the pennant) and drifted onto Junk Island. The name says it all. It is a pile of large rocks and concrete block that shredded the side of HERON, punching hole the size of a refrigerator in its port side. The wind spun it around so that the starboard side hit the rocks and a similarly large hole was gouged in that side as well. The boat is a total loss. It was so sad to watch her go and there was nothing we could do about it. There was no way for us to get to her and save her from her fate.

It didn't get much later when a Cheoy Lee ketch broke lose and was driven through the mooring field. It ran into the Queen Merry, the small barge we use fora race boat on Wednesday and must have hole itself. It continued across the river and eventually sank somewhere off of Electric Boat.

Both owners were informed and eventually showed up and were much distraught which is perfectly understandable. Even though both had insurance, there is just no way to ease the sense of loss they suffered. True, they were only boats but if you have never owned a boat or been owned by one, you really wouldn't understand.

Several other boats dragged their moorings but fortunately no broke free so there were no further loses. TYC suffer minimal damage and all in all, it was an event less than forecast. It was bad tropical storm but one that never made it to hurricane status, at least not here.