Our boat has now survived two relatively harsh tropical storms at her mooring off Nyack; Ernesto and now Irene. One larger keel boat from our mooring field lies sadly at an angle against the rip-rap rocks just south of our club; a likely casualty of failed mooring hardware. While conditions were pretty wild here we did not get the 80 – 85 knot gusts that were in the forecast; LI Sound buoy wind history showed no gusts over 50 with the same in the ocean by Ambrose channel. Irene sucked in a huge amount of dryer air after it left the Delaware Bay area so by 10 am on Sunday after the center of circulation had passed us it was clear, there was no rain, the winds were lighter and the sun tried to come out. A storm surge sped up the Hudson and into the Sound (probably from both ends – yes, that sounds dirty!).
We were lucky. We also spent part of today putting the boom and both sails back on and removing the extra pendants from our mooring gear. It was a gorgeous day to be out on the river even if we were just working on our boat.
The down river current was ripping along, likely due to the watershed up north that is still draining south from all the rain. The river water was very turbid with all the land runoff.
There are some areas hard hit with flooding to our north and our neighbors to the south took the brunt of the stronger winds in North Carolina where it first made windfall.
I am hoping that my friends on the Chesapeake fared as well as we did.
