Sailboats & Hurricanes - It's All About the Prep! (Sailing Curiosity

Well we were really hoping that Hurricane Matthew was going to die out or change courses or do something else other than head for us. That doesn't look like it's going to happen so I think we will be experiencing our first hurricane. That's exactly the way I feel about it Zinga. Yep a hurricane may be coming our way but Jason has to do the dishes. Kent's on his way over so it has to be somewhat presentable. He's going to tell us exactly what we need to do to prep and we're basically left to our own devices because he's busy prepping all the other boats here but he will come back this afternoon and help us run some chain and some lines I think. And we're like right on the edge of that. Yeah we're right in the edge of it which means it's not worth taking a chance. Yeah no chances. No chances. No chances. It's your boat you do what you want. Yeah so we got to we got to pay attention to that. Okay. Because if this track wobbles anywhere to the west. Yeah. We're in your boat. Okay. First thing to do is assume that the wind's going to pick up in an hour which it isn't but so the genoa should be your first thing. Okay. Because if it's strong winds Step one of a hundred for hurricane preparations. Have you still got that extra big anchor line? Remember that one you had? We have two big anchor lines. Yeah that's one that's not attached to the anchor. Yeah one that's not attached. Yeah so you must get that out. Next step get all the lines out and assess what we need. With the dinghy you take your anchor. Yeah. To that sports fish or across like that. Yeah. And just drop it there. Yeah. And then leave it. Okay. All right. If the wind's coming from your bow. Yeah. You know that's a lot of torque on these lines here. Yeah. Yes. We'll tie it around the piling on the other side. Oh the chain. Yeah or we'll just do double loops and then bring it here to your midship cleat but we won't pull it up yet because obviously boats are. Yeah so coming. Yeah so if the weather really picks up pull it tight and then pull her two feet off the dock. Okay. And then you're golden. Things are getting awfully exciting here with Kent running lines. We've run out our fancy new mantis anchor which no better time to test out an anchor or give it its first use than a hurricane. I would like to say I'm nervous because we just assembled it like eight hours ago at midnight. It's gonna be fun. What you need to do is move at least five feet forward. Okay. Then spring lines we can also look at it from outside as long as possible so. Okay. And not chafing on anything so I would suggest two wraps on the pilings. Okay. To reduce hard points. Okay. And then to the furthest cleat possible you know so you want the longest thing so if it's a 10 foot surge you want the boat to go up and down without sinking. Okay. As many long lines as possible. That look like you know what you're doing. How far does the stack pack in that main sail go? Do we need to remove that or do we? No for this I would just wrap it tightly so loosen the lazy jacks. Yeah. Okay. And then rolling hitch it along. Okay. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Every couple of feet. Okay. And then pull it in. Okay and that's up our news. Lazy Jack. Collateral damage. We just got that. It'll match the hole that Jason and I put in there. Yeah. No it doesn't. What you can do you can take your stack back off if you want. You can take your man off if you want. Yeah. But you're getting into a lot of work. Doing all this prep work definitely makes it feel more real and imminent for whatever reason so feeling prepared but I'm also feeling uh much more nervous. I hear someone over your shoulder over there asking for micromanaging. What are you trying to micromanage me? We need micromanaging Oh well I'm your girl. So uh tell us what to do. The dinghy? Should we drop it? No no strap it in. Strap it in tight. Yeah just put a ratchet strap around it and bring it in. Okay. Nervous about the dinghy Jason? Only weighs like 500 pounds so could do a lot of damage if it lets loose. Got lots of ratchet straps though. And mass panic. Yeah. So we're going sailing right? Yeah let's go sailing. Triple reef. Scotch Springs we're good. So the fuel lines at the gas stations are out of control and Jason is going to dinghy over to the fuel dock until there where there's no lines. At least we hope there's no lines. We were told there's no lines. And it's also just around the corner so it won't be any good. Good luck in the rain. Thanks. Time to go. They were so dead I thought they were closed but I uh wrapped it up there and sure enough they were open have plenty of diesel and uh yeah yeah we're all set. Look at that. Nice. Sweet. Because at first we thought well just use the car load up the jerry cans and go fuel them up at the gas station because well it's usually cheaper there and we thought oh it'll be simple right but then our friend Steve told us that there was a massive line and it was crazy and that's when Kent said no go to the fuel dock here at the marina because there won't be anybody there. Apparently not. Dinner time. See you tomorrow. It is definitely the calm before the storm around here. Everything is quiet. Every boat is secured. There are lines going everywhere. There is absolutely nothing left open or a soul moving around here. We're pretty much it and we have not decided if we're going to ride out the hurricane here at the boat or if we're going to take somebody up on an offer to evacuate and go inland. It's all going to depend on tomorrow and what the forecast is looking like but either way tensions are definitely in the air. There's a little excitement, a little nervousness and yeah feeling good about our preparations but just nervous about it being our first hurricane ever. First hurricane ever and we've only lived in our boat for like five months. We've been sailing legitimately for less than that so talk about a break-in. Wish us luck. We'll see you tomorrow. Fun fun fun. All right Jason what's going on? Well it's Thursday. The storm is definitely going to hit us big time and in about two hours, a couple hours I guess, the tropical storm conditions will hit. In about eight hours this evening the hurricane will hit if it hits Fort Lauderdale. We're faced with one big decision right now and that is do we stay on the boat or do we go stay with friends? It's really hard to Good old Kent comes to the rescue yet again. He's here this morning making sure that everything is good and helping us tie our last few lines and if there is one thing that we will walk away with it is a lot of knowledge about how to secure our boat, how to tie it up properly. It's been a huge learning experience. Hopefully we have a boat at the end that we can apply all the knowledge to. You're not going to worry about Jake here? No it's just a backup. You know if the other key drops off, if the cross beam rips off, the bar falls down and at least your boat won't blow away. All right we just tightened up the anchor chain. Kent said, oh the wind's really picking up, Kent said you really need to tighten the anchor because you want most of the pressure on the chain and our anchor basically is way up there by that big boat called La Dolce Vida and it's set in. We've got it set pretty good hopefully and yeah we'll see how the new Manus anchor works out. Talking about getting it just in the nick of time. All right I just have to point out something that's a little scary. Our boat's tied up really well. There's some other boats that aren't tied up very well but just walking here in the yard all this scaffolding and all these foam blocks and over here there's like metal poles and wood blocks just waiting to be picked up by they said 100 to 150 mile per hour winds and if one of those comes rocketing like even those straps just laying on the ground and those pyramid looking things like this can pick up by the wind they'll destroy our boat. And everybody else's. It just seems like a really like poor preparation. Really bad. I gotta show you something really neat though. Come here. This boat had to stay on the hard because it's not ready to go in so Kent rigged up a bridle to the front of his F-350 and we pulled the the chain up and the winch so basically this boat is being held down by this giant Ford truck. I just thought that was cool like man power. Well that's what happens when you uh it's a performance turnaround so it's like super light. Yeah it weighs nothing so that could blow off if it wasn't for you know you can only do what you can do but anyway I thought that was cool. It is pretty funny. Who else can say they have a truck as an anchor? Whoa we're getting our first little band of weather here. It's not the actual hurricane just the storms that are rolling in with it but they are setting up a action cam out there so that we can actually record the whole storm as long as the railing and everything else doesn't go. And it's exciting out there. Nice. Nice. That's what we do for photography. We're setting up a time lapse out there you can see our boat you can see the whole marina and the storm everything. Well you can see this boat is already heeling over and we're not even at tropical storm winds yet. Better safe than sorry in case there's a surge or some sort of electrical spike. It's a good thing we got plenty of lithium power. It lasts for a few days just in case the storm stays. I don't know. I don't know. Who knows. Thank you sir. All right we got Cleo. Katzinga. Heading out. While we did all of our prep work the boat is secure. I feel like it's good. Secure as it can be. Yeah and it's interesting because we've decided to take Kent up on his offer to go stay at his house and ride out the storm. Because we said anything over a three we would leave the boat. Yeah that was our threshold. If it was over three we weren't staying. If it was a three or under we would stay. Yeah so here we are. We're on our way to Kent's house to ride out the storm while some of the boat captains and the other boat owners were coming up to us saying oh you sticking around for the storm. We said no we're leaving. And they actually flew in to stay on their boat or you know drove a distance to come and stay on the boat through the hurricane versus leaving. And it's interesting because while the boat is definitely everything to us. We've poured everything we've got into it. It's just not worth it. It's not it's not worth our lives. Yeah so you know these people are thinking you know in the middle of a storm if the line goes loose or something happens they can do something about it. And we were worried we would have the same temptation of oh but you could just run out there and get it real quick. But that's how you hear people die. Yeah you can't fix it when it's in the middle of it. When you're in the middle of a storm there's no way we're not doing. And especially we're inexperienced. We this is this is our first storm. Yeah. So it's just we didn't want the temptation. We figure it's better to just suck it up. Now leave early. Yep. Suck it up. And we did the best we can with the boat. Kent double-checked our work. So he helped us tie it up. I feel confident in it. So if something's gonna happen it's gonna happen. But at least we're safe. Yeah that's all that matters. We got the cats of course in the back. Yeah they're being awfully quiet. The cats are very safe. We are very safe. And that's that's what matters. Nothing nothing else matters. Nope. So movies and popcorn and lots of wind and rain. And hopefully that's the most we'll see. Yeah. And we'll try not to worry about the boom. All right. Under Kent's advice we came back to the dock just to double check all of the boats. And so far it's just a bunch of rain. Nothing too crazy. But the crazy I think is about to hit. All right so that's it. We're headed back to our safe shelter at Kent's house. This is not a waterproof camera so we're hurrying. All good. All right let's go. All right bye. This is what our vegetarian sausage is supposed to look like. But Kent stuck it on the barbecue with the plastic still on the outside. That is when you you are not in a vegetarian household. Stick with real meat. Yeah real intestine. I don't know if you can see how sad this looks. These are good. They're pretty spicy. I don't think I don't I don't think you should be eating them. There's nothing like burned plastic. Friends thank you for having us here. To surviving Hurricane Matthew. Giving us a place to sleep. Thank you to Ruth for our heads in the morning and floating boats as well. There we go. There we go. Apology to that. Cheers. It's all over. Yes everything looks normal because it is normal. Yeah we didn't get much of a storm at all. I mean they're back to work obviously. I think that says quite a bit. Yeah we got super super lucky. Matthew stayed far off. The worst we got was like tropical storm winds and a little bit of rain. And that was it. But we feel like we got a huge education. We dodged a bullet and got a huge education. Yeah we could have taken a class or a course but to be genuinely concerned about our boat these past few days and and doing everything that we did. I feel like next time we get a storm and we're all alone we're just going to be that much more prepared. Definitely. And what's left? Undo all the freaking work we did. This is a whole lot of work this hurricane stuff. Days. Two days of prep. Very little sleep.