Hurricane Idalia and Be Free

[Be Free]

All roads in and out blocked with trees and downed power lines.

[Be Free]

I just finished hooking up my generator so I have refrigeration, lights, fans, hot water, and of course, full Internet access. All I'm missing is air conditioning. As long as they get the roads cleared and the bridge inspected in the next 10 days or so I should be just fine.

Thanks for all the prayers and kind words. We came through this much better than many others in town.

[Herschel]

I just finished hooking up my generator so I have refrigeration, lights, fans, hot water, and of course, full Internet access. All I'm missing is air conditioning. As long as they get the roads cleared and the bridge inspected in the next 10 days or so I should be just fine.

Thanks for all the prayers and kind words. We came through this much better than many others in town.

I was monitoring a grassroots weather outfit on YouTube: "The Y'all squad". https://www.youtube.com/@YallSquad/about. They seem to be private individuals with members out on the roads reporting back what is happening and what the authorities are reporting in real time. They reported most of Steinhatchie was flooded. Had members checking for ways to get into your area. They also collect funds for weather victims. Don't know them from Adam but found their YouTube channel compelling. Assuming you and family OK? Boat OK?

[Jimmyt]

Glad you made it through ok!

[NiceAft]

Ditto.

[ris]

Be free we are so glad you guys did OK. Now is the recovery time which will take a very long time for your town. It tends to get a little depressing after a couple of weeks of no electricity and the recovery is always slow. We have had 3 bad hurricanes in central Florida since August 2004. We used a small widow a/c and parts of our Billy box from the Mac to keep cool at night in one room of the house. Hang in there.
Richard

[OverEasy]

Hi All!

Just a thought about waiting for our hurricane….up here in Beaufort SC…
Winds gusty and rain bands coming and going…
This morning forecast had track passing on top of our marina…no time to pull out so double checked the lines and double ties.
Estimates put the sustained winds at 75 with gust to 100 mph for this evening…

Decided to stay put and weather it out…

Waiting out a hurricane reminds me of being stalked by a turtle…

So far so good…..so far so good….

The forecasts have moved the track inland a few miles west of us…
New wind estimates have it down to sustained winds of 50+ with gusts of 75 mph in a couple hours before midnight…
We’ve had a few branches down but fortunately nothing significant so far up here.

Hope everyone out there on the forum is ok and without any damage

Best Regards,
Over Easy

[Herschel]

Saw some video on YouTube from a weather enthusiast with a drone. He flew it over Steinhatchie this afternoon showing the extensive flood waters, but I was surprised that so many of the floating piers seemed to come through OK. There were several boats adrift that were caught in the trees or damaged docks, but many which seemed to come through intact. A lot of the homes there are elevated quite a bit. Be Free, is your home elevated above ground level like so many I saw in the footage?

[Be Free]

I was monitoring a grassroots weather outfit on YouTube: "The Y'all squad". https://www.youtube.com/@YallSquad/about. They seem to be private individuals with members out on the roads reporting back what is happening and what the authorities are reporting in real time. They reported most of Steinhatchie was flooded. Had members checking for ways to get into your area. They also collect funds for weather victims. Don't know them from Adam but found their YouTube channel compelling. Assuming you and family OK? Boat OK?

We all came through unscathed. It's hot, muggy, and generally no fun but you take the good with the bad. Most of the time this area is like paradise; sometimes not so much.

The boat came through just fine. I'll post pictures a little later.

I don't know the group you were watching either. They may be totally legit but disasters like this bring out the scammers in droves. Be very careful who you send money to.

[Be Free]

Saw some video on YouTube from a weather enthusiast with a drone. He flew it over Steinhatchie this afternoon showing the extensive flood waters, but I was surprised that so many of the floating piers seemed to come through OK. There were several boats adrift that were caught in the trees or damaged docks, but many which seemed to come through intact. A lot of the homes there are elevated quite a bit. Be Free, is your home elevated above ground level like so many I saw in the footage?

My house is not elevated at all but it is well above the river even though it is a little over a block from shore. This picture is from the corner of my yard.



You can't see it in this picture but the house on the left side of the street has about 5' of water under it. He's on pilings so no damage.

All of that water is from the storm surge. None of it was there 30 minutes earlier. By water I'm 3.8 miles from the mouth of the river. I don't usually see much surge up here. That's why the pictures you saw had so much damage. That area is within a mile of the mouth and it almost a straight shot from the gulf. For me to get 5' they had to see over 10'.

[Herschel]

Be Free reported

My house is not elevated at all but it is well above the river even though it is a little over a block from shore.

You chose well my friend. Wonder how things turned out in Beaufort.

[Be Free]

That was something I check in advance and the main reason I didn't buy a house right on the river.

[Be Free]

As promised, for the win!

Final score MacGregor one, Idalia zero!

The mainsheet is tied to the handle on the cabin top because I was expecting 110mph winds from that direction. The hasp would have kept the top closed but it would have allowed it to open enough to let rain in.

[Dougiestyle]

Whew!!! Glad to see it in good shape.

[OverEasy]

Hi Herschel !

We came through in pretty good shape as did Over Easy all-in-all for a first hurricane on the water!

Weather forecast got better with the track gradually moving off of our slip and slowly toward the West… about 20 or so miles when the eye passed by. Winds were more than 60 with gusts near 80 mph.

After some minor yard clear up at the house I finally got over to the marina this afternoon. All the lines held (albeit a bit stretched) as did the boat and dock cleats. Our dock bow cleat did start to pull out one of its bolts though…


Here are a couple of post storm photos:
Note the stretched lines in the water… when we left her before the storm they were all up and out of the water. Line stretch was something I was concerned about as the intention was to keep Over Easy off the pier and minimize any hard banging of the hull.








Now the interior was a bit of a well shaken dry martinis…. It looked worse than it really was but Over Easy still had gone on a real E-Ticket ride:




















I took in the auxiliary lines and reset our SOP dock lines. The new Miss pan deck cleats held up perfectly… VERY glad we spent the effort to get them installed back several weeks ago. Effort we spent.

Then spent some time pseudo organizing the interior a bit.

Checking the bilges with our propositioned vacuum lines yielded about 3 cups +/- of water overall between the three bilge pump areas. The interior cabin area seemed dry with maybe a possible window drip. We’d been planning on recaulking in in the off season so not entirely unexpected.

Had a poor man’s version of fish ‘n chips for lunch aboard washed down with a bit of cider:



All-in-All we count ourselves very fortunate that we weathered this hurricane as well as we did.

Our heartfelt thoughts go out to all those who have suffered harm and loss due to this hurricane.
Our go-to place is the American Red Cross when it comes to disaster relief… if you are so inclined.

Again, we consider ourselves very fortunate indeed.

Best Regards,
Over Easy