Hurricane Florence in SC General Forum Forums

Well woke up at 5:30 this morning, actually fairly normal time for us with kids to get to school normally, and storm is now predicted to be very close to direct hit here. 🙁 hope it shifts again before Thursday. Wind speeds down to 130mph.. if it continues to drop it should be ok for us personally even with direct hit. We have gone through a bunch of 100 mph storms here over the years with no damage at all.

Yeah I have the feeling there will be a lot of trees down and moderate damage to infrastructure due to the duration. Wind strength doesn't look horrible for us right now but having the storm sit on us for 1.5 to 2.5 days instead of passing over in 12 to 18 hours like happens most times will make it a lot worse. I am anticipating 75 mph winds at our house and moderate to bad shingle loss. Shingles are about 20 years old and we started losing some last storm. maybe 10ish that I had to replace.  🙁

Hopefully boat will do ok. We will see.

Yeah I don't see roads and travel in the area being easy for a couple weeks if not longer than that. We are going to have massive flooding in NC and SC. Our house isn't affected by that but it will affect our ability to travel withing the county. Last time we lost the ability to go directly to either of the cities on to our north and south from our house for about a week because of flooded and then collapsed roads. There were dozens of places like that through out the county. Horry County where we live is 1,134 square miles larger than Rhode Island so it has a lot of roads and spread out that go over lots of creeks, rivers and swamps, that will all probably flood by 5 to 15 feet depending on which ones they are. Honestly as slow as this storm is moving that might be much much worse this time as I think it is going to dump 2 to 3 times the rain that the normal bad storm does.

So today was crazy.. talked with about every involved agency working to help recover and or prepare for  flooding in my area. I had tried calling for two days to no result. Today I drove down and spent a couple hours going from one agency to the next looking for help.  I was trying to get to the boat to check on her. I saw her from the bridge she is near and she had dragged the anchor about 20  yards or more and with a stern and forward anchor out she had swapped ends and the stern anchor line was running under the boat. After many trials and tribulations and phone calls to lots of people, I spoke with the Georgetown coast guard station and they had a boat on the wacammaw river. Since they were coming up river on another mission looking at water levels and seeing what bridges or trestles were under water already they agreed to pick me up and drop me off on the boat to reset my anchors. Not really their mission but they were very kind. Boat crew wondered who I knew to get the pull to get a boat sent to pick me up for that. LOL I just had to tell them that I had no pull, that I just asked and someone said yes. God bless the Coast Guard. Anyway long story short pulled up anchor and reset with more scope and three anchors this time. Other than dragging a few yards she come through with no damage I could see. I have to say that pulling a 80lb anchor and many many feet of chain even with a winch sucks. Rear 45lb danforth was so tight under the boat I had to move her to free up pressure to get anchor up. Current was not bad compared to the actual river but still enough pressure on boat that my muscles weren't going to do the job. Maneuver boat, run forward and try to get anchor over quickly in right place.. run back maneuver boat get next anchor over 🙂 Single handing her is physically tough when your in as bad a shape as I am. After each operation I had to sit for a few minutes and catch my breath and then do the next. Not sure how long it took. Way to long 🙂 CG boat came back by and picked me up and dropped me back off in Conway a mile up the river or so. Couldn't say thank you enough.

If they hadn't got me on Valkyr there is a good chance she would have been in the house beside the landings' yard when the water goes back down.

Reason I went to official agencys was that in the effort to keep water off the main road that goes by the landing where she is anchored they have blocked all access to the river for quite a way. I would have thrown a kayak in at the landing but wasn't willing to take the kayak from a mile plus up river down the the boat and then back up the river. Down would have been easy. river was probably moving at 5 to 7 knots.  There were some pilings that were just vibrating from the water speed. Don't think I could paddle my kayak for more than 100 yards at faster than 5 knots. 🙂

anchoring is a bit of a gamble under the best of times. Most of the time you can't see your anchor to confirm if it has a good hold. If you can get in the water and check it do that always, but sometimes you can't; to deep, to cold, no visibility, to much current. You can back down on it, but even if it holds, what is it holding on and will it turn loose in the next ten tugs. Where I'm anchored now is a mud bottom. It grabs pretty quick and holds well to a point but it's mud and a strong enough pull and it will move. Why I had 2 anchors out and now three. Caution will take you far to be totally secure you need a bit of luck to.

Example is my 2 anchors did drag. Luck is that they dragged to the center of the area I anchored in putting the boat in the center of a safe area. If they had dragged another 20 yards my boat would have been over the bulkhead of the house beside the landing and if grounded there be anywhere from 10 to 40 yards from water sitting in someones yard or even against someones house. Where my boat is sitting luckily is out of pretty much any current. 20 yards away the river is flowing 4 to 7  knots, my boat is just up in the channel leading to the landing and dock there and in an eddy. Yesterday when anchoring and leaving the helm to run forward the boat moved very slowly. 10 to 20 ft a minute maybe. Couldn't ask better than that. That tells me it was only wind that moved the boat during storm.

Yep.. thought about doing the anchor to anchor setup but I was worn out and to tired to maneuver that setup when I set it and when I re-set it. I used a two 75 to 80 lb anchors off the bow and a 45 off the rear. Did fine for this storm.. bottom sucked where I anchored as it is all mud but it was a matter of access. I over anchored and it worked out this time.