Dealing with Hurricane Matthew... Oct 6-8

We are so thankful that the storm turned away from the mainland and spared our area of the worst of the storm.  But our thoughts and prayers are with all those impacted in the Bahamas, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.  We can hardly imagine the hardships being undertaken by millions.  Unbelievable.
Wednesday we "toured" the area shopping and some of the residential areas on a long walk.  The Walgreen's and Farm Fresh grocery stores are within a half mile.  The Farm Fresh is a very nice store with a great selection of fresh wholesome foods.  It is right up there with the Harris Teeter stores we have shopped.  There are a number of stores and restaurants within walking distance here. Here is a view from across the canal of Sum Escape and her neighbors...we are near the left side of the picture.

Some photos of our walk around the Great Bridge Parks commemorating the big battle here.

 

Plans existed in 1775 for the Abermarle and Chesapeake Canal!

Atlantic Yacht Basin is making good progress with our list of repairs and maintenance.  Thursday we had a technician from CAT adjust the throttle sensor, another tech get the genset running, parts ordered for the windlass (new clutch plate will be installed on Monday) and adjust the PSS dripless shaft seals to stop a small spray of water (tightened tension on bellows). 

Friday new sanitation hose and duckbill valves in the vacuflush systems installation began.  This should forever solve any odor issues we have been fighting for a while now.  A diver cleaned and inspected things below the water line.  He was 68 years of, ex Navy diver and dove with a helmet type mask that had a microphone.  so he gave a "play by play" as he inspected and cleaned.  Interesting.  All is well.

An air conditioning tech is scheduled Monday to acid flush the system to clean out barnacles, etc from the salt water environment.  So we should be on our way by the middle of next week. 
A few words on sanitation hose installation.  If you are not interested in gory repair details, skip this paragraph.  Wow, what a job. 

The old hoses had hardened with age and the manufacturing process of the boat apparently had all these lines installed prior to putting the deck structure on the boat.  A number of the hoses were severely crushed where they went through structural walls and such.  In short, hoses were cut and removed in pieces with the aid of heat guns, soapy lubricant, lots of grunting and elbow grease.  Also had old lines that were not used and capped off (presumably when the vessel was readied for Great Lakes compliance of the overboard discharge system) removed.  Yes they still had fluid and material in them...probably the main source of odor we were having from lying there and permeating the hoses. 
We picked up a car on Friday as the weekend is forecasted for nothing but rain and lots of wind.  So hopefully we can at least do some laundry, go to a movie, do some shopping, etc.
We have made reservations in New Bern, NC for a slip starting 10-15 or so. After that things will get a little more up in the air.  We don't know the damage to the waterways and facilities south of there and only the running of time will start to clear this up. The ICW has never fully recovered from Sandy and we can envision a very similar situation with shoaling, debris destroyed marinas, anchorages no longer useable, etc.  So we will take our time and sort things out.
So after we wrote this, we find that the North Landing draw bridge will be closed to ICW traffic from Tuesday through Friday this week for previously scheduled repairs.  So this means with boat repairs not completed, we will be here a few more days here.  So New Bern will have to wait. a few days it appears.
Just hunkering down with double lines, fender boards deployed and everything tied down or stowed below.  Here we are watching the large ferry type boat in front of us get some extra lines on this morning.

Forecasts have us seeing 40 mph winds and gusts to 55 mph.  Rain forecast is any where from 8"to 12".  But we float and the pilings are pretty high here so we think this is a good spot for the boat.  But after we talked to the technicians about the flood warning they said the docks would be underwater.  So we bailed and got a hotel room 8 or so miles away. 

The water was already up about two feet from this morning so we think we made the right decision.  Bouncing around in the wind and then being confined to the boat with underwater docks was not too appealing.  We'll call the dock master in the morning after it stops raining and see what the status is before we return.

That's all for now....thanks for following our blog and all the concern we received via text and email.