Hurricane Ophellia

September 15, 2005

Friday, September 09, 2005 - Adams Creek, ICW, NC
By Tom

We left the town dock in Oriental this morning under sail and we did not turn on a motor at all today. Quite a novelty for most sailboats.

We sailed out of the harbour under head sail alone, mostly because we were only heading 7 miles away and I am too lazy to unpack the mainsail for that little of a distance.

Wow, I really am lame.

Once out on the sound, the wind picked up to 15 - 18 knots and we sailed along quite well towards Adams Creek and our designated anchorage for the night. We could have kept going south, but a new hurricane named Ophelia is threatening to come our way and we want to be close to Steve and Sally on Broad Creek if we need to run and hide.

We dropped our anchor while under sail, another first for us, and it seemed to hold ok. I am kind of hedging my bets on how well it dug in without motor reverse, but we have a good 1.5 miles we can drag without hitting anything so we are probably alright.

I deployed my crab whacker off the back and only got 1, which I gave his freedom. Lack of crabage (crabs) forced me to cook up barbecued pork ribs for dinner with a tequila lime shrimp appetizer. For the veg heads among us we also had a small side salad. Milo grazed in mine.

After dinner, Mila and Milo played demolition ferret and then we all turned in at sun down. Hopefully By Tomorrow NOAA will have an idea of what Ophelia is going to do

Saturday, September 10, 2005 - Oriental Harbor, Oriental, NC
By Amy

We are currently running for the hills. NOAA is predicting Winds of Death for the next several days, followed by Hurricane Ophelia. Great.

This forecast caused us to reevaluate our plans to continue on to Beaufort. As we've mentioned previously, the anchorage there is packed with mooring balls, making it impossible to put out extra scope with the anchor. We don't think it's a good place to sit out a good blow, let along a hurricane. Broad Creek, we figured, was as good a place as any. And surprisingly, Steve & Sally are williing to have us back. Yay!

Thus, we weighed anchor and began to retrace our steps for the third time back to the Buddy Fred's creek. The winds were howling, and we tried sailing under headsail alone for about 15 minutes. Then we emerged into the Waves of Death--steady four to five footers at a close interval, with a six-footer thrown in just to beat us around. We had to take them a bit on the beam, meaning that DreamCatcher was simultaneously straddling two or three waves at a time. The motion was what I imagine it would be for a wet sock floating around in the washing machine.

Our path was too hard on the wind to keep going under headsail alone, and we were unwilling to deal with putting up a reefed mainsail and tacking about endlessly in this slop. Therefore, it was a slow, wet moter across the Neuse. After taking a great deal of green water over the bow, we ducked into Oriental to await better weather to continue our journey to the S&S marina, car lot, laundromat, and bar, also known as Steve & Sally's house.

Fortunately, the free town dock in Oriental had an open slot. We tied up next to Copasetic. Conrad and Kathy are a longtime cruising couple out of Florida. A few drinks at the bar calmed our battered nerves, and we returned to the boat to chat with our neighbor and prepare dinner. The water rose in town all evening, covering the road. By nightfall, we were being waked by passing car traffic.

Sunday, September 11, 2005 - Steve and Sally Dock, Oriental, NC
By Tom

We had a horrible trip up to Steve and Sally's this morning. NOAA is predicting a full out gale with 35 - 45 knots of wind today, but they also say Ophelia is coming.

We took the lesser of two evils and headed out into some pretty nasty chop and waves.

At times our speed dropped to 1.5 knots and every third wave seemed to soak us in the cockpit. This was probably the worst conditions we have ever been out in and it sucked. That's all I've got to say about that.

We arrived at Steve and Sally's (again) and after tying up to the dock, we went in to hurricane preparedness mode and stripped everything off of Dream Catcher. We tied about 20 lines from us to the dock and deployed one of our two anchors in an effort to keep some strain off of the end dock pilings.

We also helped Steve and Sally set out several of there anchors for the same reasons. See photos at right for a graphic display. Setting out the anchors proved to be a lot of work and afterwards I took a nap.

Miss Pat (the next door neighbor) saw that we had returned and she called over and said she would buy the steaks and chicken if I would cook. For free steak I'd just about do anything, so that was a no brainer. Dinner was a nice affair with the aforementioned steaks, some chicken breasts, a green gooey salad like substance that I could not identify and garlic bread. Amy made brownies for dessert.

NOAA is saying Ophelia is coming our way, so were are preparing for the worst. Milo thinks that hurricanes suck ass.

As a side note, if you look at the first picture to the right, you can see the Steve and Sally Marina Courtesy Car. It's the forelorned brown looking machine with the nice two tone rust color and the semi inflated tires sitting next to the curb. Sweet ride eh? Thanks again Steve and Sally.

Monday, September 12, 2005 - Steve and Sally Dock, Oriental, NC
By Amy

NOAA is telling us that Ophelia is putting on the brakes. We spent the day perfecting our pre-hurricane preparations, but it now looks like we'll have a bit more time than we expected.

Venturing to the grocery store was much like it is up north before a snowstorm. Even if only a dusting of snow is called for, everyone runs like maniacs for toilet paper, bread, and milk. Judging by the local grocery store, hurricanes cause the same irrational purchasing habits. Although we did buy bread, we focused our pre-storm dollar on important items, like beer.

The evening was spent at Steve & Sally's evaluating the storm coverage on TV. Let me just say that local news in North Carolina is not a high dollar production.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005 - Steve and Sally Dock, Oriental, NC
By Tom

The boat is as ready as we can make it. The storm has slowed down even more and NOAA is saying we can expect hurricane conditions for 12 - 18 hours. There is talk of the storm increasing to a category 2, but we haven't heard anything concrete.

Every anchor we own and all of our dock lines have been deployed in an effort to keep us safe and sound. We used the anchors to help take some of the strain off of Steve and Sally's dock. Hopefully it won't let go in the middle of the storm and have us all floating away.

I think I have guilted Steve into riding out the storm on his boat next to us. We only have a foot or so of room on either side of us and as we are expecting 7-10 feet of surge, we need to be on board to let the dock lines out as the water goes up.

NOAA is saying the weather should start tonight and build all day tomorrow.

Wednesday, September 14, 2005 - Steve and Sally Dock, Oriental, NC
By Tom

General shitty weather. Wind is over 45 knots now. Hurricane is almost here.Too rough to write.

Thursday, September 15, 2005 - Steve and Sally Dock, Oriental, NC
By Tom

What a shitty night. I was outside in the torrential rain every 40 minutes letting line out as we floated up and up and up.

The anenometer in Oriental recorded a peak gust of 92 knots! That's a lot of wind. It rained most of the night as well, not the normal rain we are used to, but the Forest Gump upside down buckets of rain. At times it was raining so hard it almost hurt.

First light was delayed as the hurricane slowly decided to move on. By 9 am it was light enough to see and Steve emerged from his boat still in one piece. I promptly hit the sack and when I awoke around noon, conditions had improved greatly. The wind was down to 35 knots and the 6 foot surge was heading back out to sea. By 5pm the dock came back out of the water.

Amy and the ferrets and me and the boat all came through the storm without damage. I can honestly say I wouldn't recommend riding one out if you can avoid it