Preparing for Hurricane Florence

We knew it was going to happen at some point and now we are in the middle of riding out our first hurricane.

Our boat is sitting in a private slip in Oriental, NC. While this town only has a population of 900 people it is the center of the sailing universe in NC. Nestled in the mouth of the Neuse river where it opens into the Pamlico sound, Oriental offers good protection and easy access to major waterways.

We discovered Oriental on our way back to NC after we purchased our boat on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake. The town is about as sailor friendly as it gets. Visitors have free access to the town docks for up to 3 nights with access to a free pump out station. In addition, one can freely borrow bicycles from the Provision Company to explore the town. The local grocery store has a free shuttle to and from the town docks for provisioning. What else does a sailor need?

We fell in love with the town and the people and even though we left for a short time to keep our boat in a marina in New Bern, Oriental took us back in. We were tired of paying exorbitant marina prices and looked on Craigslist for private slips for rent. When I saw that there was an option in Oriental I jumped on the opportunity right away. There we met a character named Rusty Boltz and his wife Sharon. Both of them showed us tremendous hospitality and assured us that their slip was one of the best around and they were not kidding. The slip behind their house is on a finger of Whitaker Creek which by definition is a hurricane hole. It was a great move for us.

This week we heard about Hurricane Florence's arrival in the Carolinas and so we jumped immediately into action in prepping the boat for the storm. I bought new dock lines and read a number of articles about hurricane preparations. We took all things of value off of the boat and tidied up all items we had sitting on the dock. Using spring lines and tying high on the pilings we anticipate a 9-13 foot storm surge as predicted.

We are playing it safe and so we headed inland to weather the storm. Right now all we can do is hope that we took all the precautions to protect Titania and that it will survive in its spider web of lines. We will find out if it worked in a matter of days.