IRENE, D-Day - 1

SHIP'S LOG:

The panic has begun! People are running around now trying get their boat ready for the "Advent of Irene" and most are throwing money around to do it. It is surprising, but then again maybe it is not, that so many are ill-prepared to deal with a serious weather event. People are our buying more fenders, and huge lengths of line, and new pennants, and are having divers check their moorings( if they are staying put) and putting on new chains and more chains, well the list is practically endless. All this preparation, which already should have been done, should have been accomplished with stores already on boats. All of the stuff should have been items that one would normally have on a boat. True, I did go out and by buy 50ft. of Dacron cord but that was to replace what I would be using up.

ABISHAG's two problems, the alternator and the Genoa were solved on Friday afternoon. The installation of the alternator was a simple process though I always find such things a source of terror. But with a little help, it went off without a hitch. The Genoa problem turned out to be a snag by the top furling car at the top of the mast. Johnny B. Good (real name by the way)got hoisted up to the top and in less time than it took to get him up and back down the problems was solved.

I put on a secondary set of pennants so that if the first should chaffe thru or break( they are 1 1/2 inches in diameter)they will do the job, though they are only 1 inch in diameter. All is of the deck. The sails are inside the boat. The life raft is inside as well. The dinghy is deflated in Henry's backyard, along with the outboard motor and gs cans. The dodger and bimini are removed and stored below, along with the Bar-B-Q, the radar reflector, the cockpit cushions, and everything else removable. The old saw is that what you leave on deck should be considered lost in a bad storm and Irene may just qualify as that.

I say may qualify for as of right now 12;43PM EST, she seems to be trending westward a bit and losing strength. She is whacking the outer banks of North Carolina and is going to brush along the coast of New Jersey and could very probably smack NYC head on. All of that travel over land is going to sap her a lot and as of right now, we are going to experience, not hurricane but a tropical storm, 40 -60mph winds, with the storm surge coming at low tide. I'll take that happily as it is so much better than what was being forecast only a day ago. Obviously things could still change but I am prepared for whatever. Now comes the tough part, the waiting!