Yesterday I attempted to prepare our sailboat, SeaQL, for hurricane Irma (as best I could.) I had wrapped the jib sheets around the furled jib to help hold it. But the sheets only went around the bottom half of the jib. A neighbor across the dock warned me that 100 mph winds would unwrap the jib and then rip it to shreds. He advised me to remove the jib from the furling and stash it inside.
With great effort, I removed the jib and basically wadded it up. There was no way I could fold it neatly on the deck of the boat. And I could barely lift it after wadding it up. I put in onto a dock cart and took it to the car and managed to coax it into the back seat. After two hours of hard work out in the sun I was so exhausted I could hardly walk. I finished tying down the boat, and started back to Tampa at about 4:30 PM. It took me an hour and a half to get home. (Normally a 45 minute drive.) I suspect that most of the delay was just normal rush hour congestion rather than hurricane traffic.
Today, I drug the jib out of the car and spread it out on the driveway, in an attempt to fold it neatly. I had no idea how big that jib is until I had it spread out on the driveway. (It doesn't look that big on the boat!)
Sherry helped with the folding. I could not have possibly done it alone.
Progress! Not really professional looking, but better than yesterday.
Final result. Still a bit of a mess.
I took it into the garage and stashed it on the bottom level of the storage shelves. If we get water in the garage, the jib should survive it better than most of the stuff stored there.
Unfortunately, the boat is not so secure. The neighbor across the dock said that the weather forecast was predicting an 11 foot storm surge. If that happens, there is little chance that the boat will survive. The water would be above the tops of the pilings in the marina. But I think that prediction was based on the projected path two days ago, when they were expecting Irma to go up the Gulf coast of Florida. Today the forecast is looking a lot better (for us), with Irma projected to go up the Atlantic coast. If that projection holds we should get just moderate wind and rain and essentially no storm surge.
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It turns out that the boat was not damaged. The surge was only a couple of feet and the wind was only about 50 mph. I don't think any boats in the BCYC marina were damaged. The clubhouse is OK, except for one panel of screen being blown out on the screened porch. One small tree behind the clubhouse was blown down, but didn't cause any damage.
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