Yikes Ike !,big seas

[thataway]

Mailbox 101.

You don't understand that part the gulf coast or the unpredictability of the storms. It would be suicide to try and out run a hurricane in small boats. Some areas have rivers which are navigable and offer protection for small boats. That is not true for many hundreds of miles of the part of the Gulf coast which was in the storm path. It is a bit different in the Mobile to Apalachicola area, where we do have large enough rivers that boats can run up into the oxbows and hide. Even there it is imposiable to provide shelter to the people in these boats if you used them for mass transit. Even here, we put boats into bayous and rivers and then get off the boats. In Ivan several thousand boats were lost, even with places to hide. The path of Ike was very wide--and we still don't have a lot of information about some areas of Louisiana which are very low, and poorly protected for many miles inland from the coast.

 

[MikeMac]

Good news, through a series of circumstances my Classic is OK. My marina looks to have had the highest survivability rate in the Clear Lake area, maybe around 95%. My boat mostly stayed on the ground-level dry stack rack, with the plugs out of the transom drains, but it did bounce around a bit in the surge, due to the floatation in the bow. Several other boats floated out of the rack area and came down on their sides when the water receded. When I walked up my boat the scum line on the hull (which was about maybe three feet off the ground, and about one foot up the hull) made me think that it had gotten water in it. but not high enough to hit the powerheads on the main motor or the kicker. I climbed aboard and took the battery cover off the battery box, which is on the starboard side of the motor well and there was no water in the box. Then I opened up the cabin which has about a 6-inch-high threshold between the cabin and the aft cockpit and there was no water in the cabin. There was a steel H-beam post about 6 inches away on the starboard side just aft the front of the cabin and the rub rail pounded on that for a while after being hit by the boat on the port side, but nothing that can't be cleaned up in about 5 minutes. The rack the boat was sitting on had settled a bit in the wet ground and the skeg on my Honda 75 was resting on the concrete pad in front of the rack area. I didn't like that too much, so I got one of the lift operators to raise the rear of my boat a few inches while I tilted the motor up. I hit the trim button on the side of the motor and the motor came up about 2 inches and then the power trim pump stopped, which I thought was pretty curious. How come I had a dead battery? Then it hit me, my big cockpit bilge pump had been set on "auto" so it had been trying to pump the surge water back out as it came in the drain holes until the battery died. Did that keep me from getting water in the cabin? Who knows, but it probably didn't hurt. I suspect the boat sat stern-down on the rack with water jetting out the side with the bow floating around a bit, until the surge level receded. I was very lucky!

So overall I think I may be out a battery, if I can't get it to take a charge, and a good cleaning.

Mike

 

[marvin4239]

The following is and article from a trade publication I subscribe too. What a task the Coast Guard has in cleaning up this mess.


Coast Guard Mobilizes Forces to Reopen Houston Ship Channel and Surrounding Waterways

SUGAR LAND--September 17, 2008--Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Among the many tasks that industrial plant owners along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast must overcome in the wake of Hurricane Ike is waiting for the reopening of the waterways that serve the region. The ports and terminals of the Houston Ship Channel and Gulf Coast Intercoastal Waterway support hundreds of chemical plants, dozens of petroleum refineries, hundreds of food processing plants and many other industries that are all dependent on these arteries for the movement of products in and out of their plants and to their end markets.

Portions of the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway were reopened Monday, September 15, from Houston and Galveston moving west toward south Texas, while the northbound section from Galveston to the Beaumont/Lake Charles, Louisiana, area remains unsafe for commercial traffic. At the same time, the Houston Ship Channel was opened to outbound commercial traffic by vessels with a draft of 12 feet or less. It is estimated that more than one hundred ships sit off the shores of Texas, awaiting authorized entry into the ship channel.

The dangers of entry into the ship channel and adjoining waterways are numerous and include sunken ships, large equipment that was swept from the shoreline and shrimp boats with potentially miles of rope and cable drifting among the wreckage. There are certain chemical and oil spills adding to the environmental impact of the debris floating in the bay complexes. Efforts to deploy spill containment systems for major spills began on Saturday as the storm passed and allowed for safe access to the areas affected by the storm.

Beyond removing large debris from the shipping lanes, the Coast Guard faces the task of replacing an estimated 90% of the safety buoys and navigation devices. Most safety buoys are anchored to the channel's floor, and with the storm surge experienced during Hurricane Ike, many of these buoys are completely gone or have moved a great distance from their original position. Re-establishing safe routes in and out of the channels is a key part of opening the area's ports for commercial traffic once again. The Coast Guard has been working almost non-stop since the storm passed to ensure the channel's depths and widths have not been compromised and that navigation devices are relocated accurately.