We And Our Boat Were Spared

My last post had a "Perils of Pauline" or "cliff-hanger" ending. So I began this post with the resolution right in the title because I dislike being kept in suspense.

The weathermen had predicted a 13 foot "storm surge" and I feared that 13 feet on top of the normal high tide would have "floated my boat," and its dock, off its pilings to their probable destruction. But it seems that I had an inaccurate definition of "storm surge" in mind.  The apparent definition is the height of the water from "mean low water", the normal level of the water at low tide, up to the crest at the top of the storm-caused high tide which was thirteen feet. This definition ignores the fact that the first six feet of the rise of the so called storm surge is unrelated to the storm itself but happens normally, about every twelve hours, every day, even on the most tranquil days. So the portion of the "storm surge" that I would have give that name, is only that portion the rise above mean high water. So the storm surge, the increment of additional tidal rise caused by the storm, above the normal high tide was only seven feet, not thirteen and not high enough to cause destruction.

Other docks at the Huguenot YC were not as fortunate as the remote one they assigned us to. Pilings bent over

and having floated part way off  the top because the diagonal shortened the height of the piling, crashed through the dock. The square of rollers in the lower right is what this piling used to come up through!

This dock, at which our friends' boats: "J-Erica" of Bruce and Linda, and "Windsong" of Jerry and Louise, had been tied, are rather wrecked, but those two boats and many others tied to it, were relocated to other docks where they apparently survived.

The club let me use a nice twin ended rowing boat to get out to the dock to inspect and load a few winter things aboard. One of the three fenders I had hung at ILENE's port side as cushions between boat and dock was lying on her deck and someone had hung a fourth small one at her side during my absence. The seven lines seemed a bit looser than I left them. A six foot branch of a tree was lying on the dock and what appears to be a large blue plastic port-a-potty booth was floating just beneath the surface of the water between the port quarter of the boat and the dock.

Meanwhile, at the Harlem, there was storm damage. Two boats, including Bennett's "Defiance", on which I enjoyed the Club Cruise during the summer of 2011, is lying on her side on a sandy beach of Rodman's Neck, awaiting the insurance company's appraiser to determine whether she shall be repaired or scrapped. [Note: Defiance was spared with only superficial damage!] At the Clubhouse, the steps and ramp from the lawn to the dock was ripped off from its proper place and moved about two feet inland. The patio deck had wrenched about two feet seaward, away from the clubhouse and one of the concrete pilings on which it is mounted was bent over; two ground level windows of the water-facing greenhouse-like restaurant were broken and the several inches of water that had warped the floorboards and the rug, had receded; there was debris throughout the parking lot; a ramp to the locker house had been ripped away from that house a few feet (The metal ramp and the wood platform used to abut the locker house).

One boat, Tom's "Odyssey", with a retracted swing keel, which consequently was sitting very low on its cradle had floated part way off this cradle and is hanging on but not my much, very near Jim's "Aria".  The blue carpeted wooden blocks in the foreground were holding the boat in place until it was washed about six feet backwards!

I will undoubtedly go to a work party to help clean the place up, but not until the insurance company gets a chance to assess the damage.

All told we all fared a lot better than the large square rigged "Bounty" replica, lost off Hatteras, and have lots to be thankful for.

And how about the home front? We do have a land base, seven floors (six flights of stairs) above the streets of Manhattan, but near Broadway, "high" on the island's north-south spine. No water, salty or otherwise, entered our apartment. Fresh water was cut off as a consequence of loss of electricity (which powers the pumps that bring the water up).  Power went out below a non-straight line that crossed Manhattan from east to west somewhere in the 30's and 40's. This started in the height of the storm's fury at about 8:30 Monday night and was not restored until about about 5:30 pm Friday, about 93 hours later. A Ginko tree planted outside our window, its branches having been cropped off at about our level, was whipping back and forth during the high wind but the tall remaining branches neither broke off not broke our windows. Another tree, planted in a small piece of unpaved ground at the curb, had a huge limb torn off which blocked the street but was quickly pulled to the side of the street where it lies, awaiting final removal in due course.

Many huge old trees went down in parks, which were closed to all but parks employees.

It was eerie to walk on a deserted Broadway in broad daylight. Usually it is crowded with cars and people even at night. Here are view north and south from Tenth Street on the morning after the storm.

We had an old battery powered portable radio and the NY Times was delivered after the first day, (not to our door as normal, but to the lobby). The corridors and stairways have no windows and were completely black. We had one not very strong flashlight (plus a detachable Kindle reading light) and no way to charge phones or other devices, which did not work from home anyway, probably because power to our local cell phone tower was out. Until Thursday, our refrigerator retained its cool and we used matches to light the stove to make tea; no coffee because our brewer here is electric.  We had set out two huge multi-gallon pots of water for washing, but it was not enough to flush the toilets, except once, so we used a bit of bleach to retard odor, but the place was a bit stinky for a while. Each morning we went out and headed north to get coffee and from Wednesday on we visited friends and restaurants and theaters north of the no-power zone. We brought towels and were permitted to take showers -- just like on the boat when we frequently go ashore for showers. My objective was to stay out well past 7 pm, at which hour we would have gone to bed and listened to the radio had we stayed home. We are young and fit enough to handle the six flights of stairs. Many older people in the building, especially those who would have had to climb as many as 19 flights of stairs, were more stuck. Our large and friendly building staff performed heroically in helping them. We got to know the busses that serve our city even though until the last night, they terminated at 23rd Street after dark because of lack of street lights below there, out of safety concerns. So we had to walk the last 13 blocks in darkness. The fare during this period was zero -- a free ride -- and folks were friendly.

We had an available more comfortable alternative to our apartment, one with light, water and heat: ILENE, but Lene could not be persuaded to go there. I believe that her months of living aboard had accustomed Lene to the more rugged life style we enjoyed for four days.

We are so blessed to have been spared and think of friends and strangers in New Jersey and elsewhere who are still without power, and some of who were killed.