Cathy Monaghan

[Zeida]

Has anyone heard about how did Cathy and Bruce make out? What about Realization? TV is showing that devastation in Raritan Bay is horrific.

What about all our folks on the LI Sound? Sine Qua Non? et al?

[M. R. Bober]

Has anyone heard about how did Cathy and Bruce make out? What about Realization? TV is showing that devastation in Raritan Bay is horrific.

What about all our folks on the LI Sound? Sine Qua Non? et al?

I've sent her an e-mail, and hope they are okay. Jim McGowan (NORTH STAR CD27) from Onancock, VA sent me this video of his old neighborhood, Staten Island. It is very ugly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOfFACUXX0s

Mitchell Bober
Sunny Lancaster, (Where we consider ourselves very lucky.) VA

[Dean Abramson]

I emailed them also, but have not heard back yet. Does anyone know if their boat was in or out of the water? If out, is where they store it near the shore?

I am also concerned about them.

Dean

[barfwinkle]

Cathy & Bruce have been without Internet almost all summer/fall.

I hope they are all.

[Paul D.]

I'm pulling for them and all other CD ers in the area too. My sister lives in NJ, albeit a bit further from the shore, and we cannot get through via phone and no email contact either.

[Paul Grecay]

I got word that the Raritan Yacht Club and Lockwood's Marina suffered extensive damage. Keeping my fingers crossed that they did OK. I am located in Lewes Delaware...the eye of the hurricane passed very close to us...about 14 miles north so we were likely in the eyewall. My CD 28 rode the storm out on its mooring with northeast exposure ... watched it on a webcam and I never saw it pitch so violently. I was amazed that it suffered not the slightest damage. I wish everyone could have been as fortunate as I was. My recent groundtackle upgrade was worth every penny.

[Mike Davis]

My cd 31 was on the hard a few days before the storm. The boat is in Brooklyn, directly across from Breezy Point, Queens where over 100 homes were destroyed. Only a handful of boats were knocked off their jackstands. My thoughts and prayers for all of those who lost so much.

[mahalocd36]

Received from Bruce:

Here is a link to a short (2 min) video that I shot at our boatyard earlier this week. Our boat is ok as it was on an upper lot, above the storm surge.
Anyone who wants to post a link to the video on the Cape Dory Message Board (I don't have access) or to share with other CD/boating friends, please do so.

Bruce Halley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L5eK6Bm5Ng

[Cathy Monaghan]

We're fine, thanks for thinking of us. Hopefully everyone we know that were in the path of the storm (and those we don't) are okay as well.

We have been without electrical power, cable, internet, etc. since Hurricane Sandy stormed through on Monday -- just got it back, many are still without.

Our neighborhood suffered mainly from another huge loss of trees, and of course those trees brought down power lines with them. There's a traffic light a few blocks from our home which toppled over from the high winds too. We had more wind here in Rahway than rain. We lost a few limbs from our own trees, but they didn't cause any damage. The house is fine.

The boatyard where we keep our boat is a royal mess. Bruce shot some video while we were down there checking on our boat, you can watch it by clicking on the link below or in the previous post:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L5eK6Bm5Ng

Raritan Bay took the largest storm surge than anywhere along the NJ and NY coast. You probably saw the devastation in Atlantic City on TV, at least I'm guessing you did. We could only listen to what was happening on our portable radio. Anyway, towns along the Atlantic Coast like Spring Lake, Belmar, Brick, etc. had major damage and that was from a storm surge less than 10 feet. Raritan Bay had a storm surge of over 13 feet, that's why there's so much damage in New York City, western Long Island, Staten Island and every town along the New Jersey bayshore. Towns in NJ on Raritan Bay, like Union Beach, look like they had a bomb dropped on them.

Back to the boatyard.....B Dock, which is the big U-shaped dock that our boat is usually on, is gone. The mast shed, which is on land down near A dock, was underwater so it's filled with a jumble of masts, furling units, lumber, and whatever else was in there. Realization's mast is in that shed about 8 or 9 feet off the ground and it appears to have been underwater too. The radar scanner is attached to it and it's sticking straight up in the air and I think it's caught on something. There's mats of sea grass jammed everywhere. Anyway, we many have to replaced all of the wiring in the mast, masthead light, steaming light, decklight, the radar, and whatever else was in saltwater.

Our boat was stored on high ground where it's about 20+ feet above sea level -- it may even be higher than that. She's fine but a few boats up in that part of the yard where knocked down by the high winds. So I'm glad we removed her winter cover.

As I mentioned, B Dock is gone. Any boats that were still tied to it were swept away with the dock. Some sank. Some of them are sitting in various parts of the boatyard, mainly the west side, still attached to parts of the dock. Some were carried off into the marsh to the west. There's a berm between the yard and the marsh 4 or 5 feet high, and boats were swept right over it. There's a group of boats that settled on the berm and one of the sailboat's keels is buried in the berm so they'll have to dig her out. She belongs to a friend of ours. Another one of our friend's boat is out in the marsh about a half mile away. His isn't alone. The insurance company is going to see if they can get a crane out to the boats that are out in the now shallow marsh. Another one of our friend's boat is in one of the piles.

Many of the boats that were hauled and set on jackstands or cradles before the storm were down in the lower part of the yard and they were all swept into assorted big piles of boats.

A few of the boats were lifted off of their cradles, the wood that was beneath their keels swept away, and then they settled back down in their cradles. The problem there is that the poppets flipped over when the boats lifted off of them so the boats are resting on the backs of the poppets, right on top of the steel brackets and there's no support beneath the boats so they are suspended in air with their hulls oil-canning. One of them is the CD330 Gems that belonged to Rod and Maggie Croes and now belongs to John Warner. A bigger problem is that until the big piles of boats are removed, they won't even be able to get to Gems or the others that are in the same situation.

We're expecting a nor'easter in a couple of days, so the boats that are laying on their sides at the water's edge may be ruined by this new storm if not ruined already.

Without power, we were lucky to have nice neighbors. Our next door neighbor hooked up his small generator and added us to the rotation for hook up, so 4 households were sharing the same generator. We'd be hooked up for an hour (we plugged in our refrigerator) then unplugged so the next neighbor could be plugged in. So we were each 1 hour on and 3 hours off, kinda like a watch system. Standing in line for gasoline is a nightmare. Finding open service stations (with power) is nearly an impossible task. And when you do find one open, the waiting line is over 3 hours. So you could very literally spend the entire day trying to get gas for the generator or your vehicle.

So that's what happened here and at the boatyard. If you'd like to look at photos of the destruction around New Jersey's coastal areas, you can click on the links below.



Fair winds,
Cathy


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This web page shows some before and after photos. It shows the "befores", to see the "afters", just swipe your mouse pointer across them.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/1 ... incart_hbx

This web page has a lot of links to Hurricane Sandy photo galleries:
http://photos.nj.com/4504/galleries/index.html

Photo gallery of the destruction in the town of Union Beach, NJ on Raritan Bay:
http://photos.nj.com/8002585/gallery/hu ... index.html