Hauled and Hurricane-Ready

The big news around here is Hurricane Matthew; though it's presently only at the southwestern corner of Hispanola there's an excellent likelihood that Charleston is going to be affected this weekend, and an increasing chance that we take a Category 3 walloping. Accordingly Charleston City Boatyard is in full storm prep mode, with the Travellift staying busy hauling boats from early in the morning until late at night.

Yesterday Windbird was the first boat out of the water notwithstanding the substantial current that seemed to have us pinned in our berth. There was actually enough room to spin Windbird around on her bow and steam out of our alley against the current. My side-current docking at the slipway wasn't terribly pretty but there were plenty of line-handlers to catch us. The rest of the haulout, pressure-washing and jack-standing process went very smoothly. We elected to pay extra to have several anchors driven and Windbird strapped down to them, given the escalating risk from Matthew. Of course the adjacent boats aren't strapped down and if they topple our caution is all for naught. The boat just to our south also has a bunch of loose junk on deck. I may go lash it down on Thursday if it looks like we're going to take a good hit.

 

 

 

The rest of our day was largely taken up with storm prep plus a few other boat projects to finish preparing for the refit. We took off both the boom and spinnaker pole and lashed them to the toerails along the foredeck; I removed the broken gooseneck fitting and collected the new one that RigRite had shipped to CCBY for us. We took the dinghy down from its davits, wrestled it around to the side of the boat, laboriously cranked it up using the spinnaker halyard, and lashed it between the mast and staysail. That would have been so much easier when we were in the water with the dinghy-hoist system still rigged! Oh well. 

 

 

We are planning to come back before the storm but just in case we don't make it back for some reason we decided to completely storm-prep by removing all the lines, fenders and gear from the rear arch, lashing the Bimini & dodger framework in place, and taking the blades off the wind generator. We also rearranged the v-berth to facilitate post-refit re-rigging, removed the remaining internal chainplate covers, ordered our new mast track from Tides Marine, and I installed a stainless folding step for the v-berth. We took an hour long nap during the hot afternoon, and still got done in time to enjoy sundowners in the suddenly-bare cockpit while listening to Jimmy Buffett. Then we headed to a nearby sports bar to watch our Minnesota Vikings beat the NY Giants on Monday Night Football.

We're just about to board a 6am flight to LGA, connecting to Manchester NH as tonight we are attending a Celebration of Life in honor of Mark Handley. It will be our first time meeting Judy, which we're really looking forward to. Tomorrow we'll fly back, do boat work Thursday, and then head up to Annapolis on Friday - weather dependent, of course, as is everything in sailing....