Nauti Dream was put on the hard Sunday morning in Hazlet, NJ. Sunday night Sandy rolled in. Monday night she knocked down part of the levee designed for a 14 foot storm surge when the surge reached 15 feet and the winds 86 mph just as high tide hit. The county run pumping station had been keeping the creek behind the house virtually to the bottom, when it is normally about 10 feet deep at high tide, until that levee broke. The creek and the entire marsh behind the house filled completely in an hour, you couldn't even see the marsh grass anymore. There was a massive lake behind our house. Talk about a huge volume of water! Water started flooding the street in front of the house too. Nauti Dream's anchor was out and her stern tied to a tree. The water kept creeping up until it covered our sidewalk in the front of the house and about 10 feet of property off the creek in the back. Then, thankfully, the water started to recede. It was a very stressful time. Even now we are running on generators, dealing with road closures and knocked down trees, and worrying about looting the next town over. Gas is in short supply and we waited 4 hours yesterday in line to get some.
That being said, owning a boat prepared us in so many ways to be self-sufficient in this disaster I can not begin to count. From owning and knowing how to operate a generator, to having the proper tools, flashlights, and survival gear I can definitely say we have increased our ability to thrive in the situation we are in. We have adequate food stores and plenty of drinking water for many weeks. We know this because of the 3 weeks we spend on vacation on our boat every summer. Our boat is still there as our refuge of last resort in the event we can no longer maintain the generator and/or lose our natural gas supply. It's water tank is full, waste tank is empty, Wallus stove/heater ready to go, batteries fully charged, and the fuel tank full of diesel. We were very, very lucky that there was not more damage for us. Many of our neighbors were not as lucky.
Some people have asked us why we did not leave. Based on the knowledge we had on hand, our preparation, and our supplies, it did not make sense to do so. The storm was over 800 miles wide after all and when we moved inland during the last hurricane they actually sustained more damage then we did. When the town did, ultimately, issue a mandatory evacuation they gave 30 minutes notice, which was down to about 10 minutes by the time we received it. At that point it was already too dangerous to move. Trees were coming down. Seeing what happened to our neighbors, our choice was the correct one.
We've been told not to expect power for 10 more days. If this is really the case I can see a lot more violence and lawlessness in New Jersey during that period. Hopefully the power boys can pull of an early fix...
