Hurricane Florence made landfall on September 14, 2018. The days leading up to her arrival were actually quite beautiful. The cloud patterns were spectacular as you can see here from my photos. During those days though we had no idea what to expect, nor did anyone else for that matter.
On September the 9th we made the decision to "batten down the hatches" so to speak and head up to Columbus to ride out the storm there. Mike made the decision, and what a great one it was, to pretty much gut out the boat of our belongings, just by some chance we would loose the Lady J to Florence.
We still had some fun even though the whole situation was a bit nerve racking. Here Mike is pretending to fend off any evil doers. God I love this man.
This is about half of what we took off the boat, who knew we had so much stuff on board. It literally filled up the whole truck.
On September 11th Mike made some final adjustments to lines and such and we headed up north to Ohio and family that was eagerly awaiting our arrival.
What we soon came to find out is that they had issued an evacuation notice to everyone in our area, so the traffic going north was well you can see from the photo above. After a good 13 hour drive we finally made it up to Columbus.
We were greeted by lots of smiles, hugs and these beautiful little guys.
We plan to fill our days spending as much time with them as we could.
Sweaty boys after a evening of playing in the back yard.
Nana just taking it easy.
We watched a lot of television, mostly the weather channel to keep up to date on what was happening back home. To our horror they were expecting our little town of New Bern to be one of the biggest hit with this storm.
Our children at one point told us to stop watching the news because at that point we had done everything we could do and we just needed to let her run her course and pray for those that stayed behind. The boys and family and friends were such a wonderful way to keep our minds off of what was happening.
Then once Florence began her rath we started receiving photos from friends that had stayed behind. The one below is of our small marina where we kept Lady J. As you can see in the photo she is the one that is leaning to her starboard side. The water had risen almost 10 feet by this time, you can no longer see the docks and only a small portion of the poles are visible. The water rising was caused from wind driven tides and the rain we had received.
We received photos of our home. Thank God we had no water damage only trees that had fallen in the storm. BIG TREES.
No visible signs of water getting in the garage.
Garden was well a bit wind blown.
Then we received this photo. "Oh Shit" was literally the words that came out of both of us. By this time the water had receded and left Lady J on her side where she took in water and sunk. Needless to say our hearts sunk with her. We had finally gotten her sea worthy and we were ready to head out on some amazing new adventures. The saying goes, "Man plans, God laughs". We were both saddened by this but so very thankful that this was all the damage we had received, you see there were so many of our friends and neighbors who lost everything in their home because of the 10-12 foot water surge. And most of all we were safe, the rest could be replaced.
Because we knew we couldn't get back into our neighborhood we stayed on in Ohio another week or so. Also because our niece and nephew were having a baby shower and we didn't want to miss out on that wonderful event. So we spent our time with friends and family and kept up on the progress back in New Bern. These pictures were taken when I went on a day trip with my dear friend Julie who took me to a bird preserve. I am not big on birds but it was a great place to take photos and I always enjoy my time with Julie no matter what we do.
As I said earlier the big event during our visit was the baby shower and what a lovely time it was. It took place at a local park, with wonderful food, decorations, games and just a spectacular time spent with all the folks that came to wish Tim and Faith their best with the upcoming birth of Henry.
These three lovely ladies are such a delight.
Papa took a photo of Jacob and I during a little photo lesson.
Our time spent in Ohio was enjoyable and it helped us get through such a crazy ordeal. Now it was time to return back to New Bern and start on the clean up.
