[Public-list] Re: Public-list Digest, Vol 510, Issue 1

[REDDERHS at aol.com]

Michael forgive me for being so long  winded with this response but I hope I 
have answered your  questions. 
Our boat is in a marina of about 200  mostly sail boats on an island call 
Pleasure Island here in Texas. The slip consists of six piling, three  on either 
side with a wooden walk between the pilings on the starboard side if  the boat 
is headed into the slip. Between you and the boat on the port side you  are 
only really separated by the center piling. As to the height of the pilings  
they are probably twelve feet above the normal tide level. I think one of the  
key things of how we survived the storm surge was what I call slides with rings 
 that the previous owner had installed on the piles. These slides are four 
feet  long made of 1 inch round bar mounted on standoffs that are through bolted 
to  the plies. You attach your dock lines to these rings so as the surge 
rises so  does your boat. By using these slides I didn't have to be so concerned 
about the  scope of my dock lines. Our dock lines are 5/8 three strand. I'm not 
sure on  other Albergs of the #520 vintage but with that size dock line I do 
not have  enough room on the cleat to double up the dock lines. I did cross 
the bow and  stern dock lines and added a second spring line. I had some 
concerns about the  aft chocks but they held just fine. I added chaff protection on 
the dock lines  by using plastic tubing. I know the tubing worked because on 
the port bow chock  the tubing came off and you could see the wear on the line. 
I was concerned  about my neighbors coming over on our boat so on the port 
side where there is  only three pilings I stretched a line at about the height I 
thought was  appropriate to maybe stop his boat if it broke loose. On the 
interior… we remove  everything we don't need to do day sailing off the boat 
during peak hurricane  season. When threaten with a hurricane we close all seacocks 
except the two for  the cockpit drains. We turned the fuel line off. Lock 
down all hatches and cover  all vents. The batteries are fully charged to run the 
bilge pump as long as they  can if needed. On the exterior…we remove all 
sails and all covers including  instrument covers. Sunday I drove through the 
marina and everyone that I saw who  did not lash the main sail cover to the boom 
and mast had the main and it's  cover in shreds. Everyone who didn't remove the 
roller fuller type head sail  also come back to a shredded headsail. The wind 
shredded them so severely that  it looked like the remains of an old tee 
shirt. I overlooked the cover for the  chain pipe, even through I have a small 
pull chain that attaches to the larger  anchor chain the cover was not lost but 
blow off. The boat on my port side lost  his main and the forward hatch cover 
was blow off so he had some water damage  inside. As the storm surge comes in 
the boat on my starboard side some how got  on the wooden walk between our two 
boats and he knocked loose some of the boards  and that exposed some good size 
spikes that really did a lot of damage to his  port side. There is still 
something that's a mystery to me. All four drains were  completely clogged with 
what looked like dust, yet when we were finally allowed  on the island there was 
not any water in the cockpit it was like all this dust  had to be on top of 
the water in the cockpit. There were two sail and one power  boats that had 
sunk. I can only imagine how I would feel if ours was at the  bottom of our slip. 
One last note, we are about 30 miles west of where the eye  came ashore. 
Remember the one inch round bar slides that I mention earlier, the  one on the 
northeast pile has two inch bow in it.