HURRICANE SEASON 2006
Surviving 2005’s Little Hurricane: Ophelia in Oriental, NC By Amy Lorenzo
September Hurricane Section September is the height of the hurricane season, and hopefully we will get through this month without any major storms. This month we have a few tips and articles by readers who sent experiences in—which is what we are really looking for; not just ideas and suggestions but real-life stories of success and failure. We continue to ask our readers to send us your stories and experiences. Some might not get published until next season, but they will all eventually go on our Web site hurricane pages. One thing for sure: Hurricane season will be back again next year.
Certainly, Hurricane Ophelia will not go down in the record books as the strongest storm to hit North Carolina. From a mariner’s perspective, however, she may have been the most frustrating.
B
orn off the coast of Florida on September 6, 2005, Ophelia was full of surprises. Her slow development had prediction models fighting among themselves. Television weather forecasts showed the storm’s projected path, a twisting cone shape I hadn’t seen since advanced calculus. Mariners seeking greater clarity may have checked the NOAA discussions, but forecasters there did not instill confidence. They predicted the storm to make landfall as a Category 1 but added that “to err by one or two categories is not impossible due to our lack of skill in forecasting rapid intensity change.” My husband, Tom, and I found ourselves amid this
Securing Your Dock Down Submitted by Herman Schiller As an additional prep for your dock, I have found that anchoring it down is very important when waves try to lift the entire dock. Since the moment a piling moves even 1/4 inch, friction between the piling and the underwater soil drops to near-zero. I have implemented a solution that has worked so far in coastal North Carolina. Use galvanized, 4-foot-long mobile home anchors under each cross-tie between pilings, and tie them to the cross-ties with bolts and 3/8-inch hot-dip galvanized chain. The anchors were screwed into the soil using a surplus, 4-inch-square section of trailer tongue stock, with a pair of 1-inch diameter holes at the top for a 4foot-long pipe handle to slide through. The trailer tongue stock fits over the saddle at the top of the mobile home anchor. The chain and its rope extension is passed through the trailer tongue and tied off at a cleat I fastened to the side of the trailer tongue. All you do is remove a board or two directly over the cross-tie, and start screwing the anchor into the bottom, and when done, bolt the chain to the cross-tie. Last year, my neighbor’s dock disintegrated, and large sections of it hit and came to rest on my dock. My dock suffered some gouges, but nothing else. 28
September 2006
SOUTHWINDS
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