Let’s get this confession out of the way now; when I thought of an “Irene” song, Come on Eileen ( Irene) did NOT come to mind,  rather I thought of Good-Night Irene . Maybe too darn old but Good-Night Irene seems a better fit.  My ode to Ms. Irene, sung (if you can sing, unlike me) to the tune of Good-Night Irene written a day before she arrived is:

Irene, good-bye. Irene, good-bye. Good-bye Irene. Good-bye Irene Please head on out to sea.

Last Saturday night you started formin’ You damaged Bahamas and more Now you might see fit to visit We’re gonna head away from shore

Seems the Irene song simply lured her in. Her nicer sister, Lady Luck was with us and by the time Irene reached the Connecticut shore, Tropical Storm preceded her name instead of Hurricane. Captain Conservative ensured that we were over prepared, thus the under-performance of Irene was doubly beneficial.

Pictures tell the story the way words cannot.

Extra lines were tied- gee those pilings look tall

Cockpit contents were stuffed into the hulls

We wrapped, covered and taped

Even the Strataglass panels were taken off- felt naked!

Saturday, the night of, we finished up around 4pm; two full days of preparations not without some angst. We had the good fortune to get a lovely room, Hearts and Flowers, at Riverwind Inn (like the name?) about 2 miles away from the marina. This way we could always walk back should the streets be impassable and our desire to return too strong! Elaine and Leo could not have been nicer and more helpful and we chatted at length about our lifestyle and learned of their future plans. A week earlier Jack and Kerry spent a couple nights here when they visited us and we had a good laugh about the chances of that occurring.

By 4:30 am the power had been knocked out so the breakfast was unable to live up to the bed. The photo below was taken around 10:30 am, not at night as the darkness suggests.

Riverwind Inn kitchen by candlelight

When Irene appeared to have finished exercising her lungs over us Russ drove to the marina to check out the situation. His slightly frantic call was that if I wanted to return to the boat, I’d better be ready when he got back. Cell service was poor, would worsen quickly until finally stopping completely. I packed up- I should mention here that we removed all the important possessions and took them with us: laptop & charger, iPhone, camera, insurance paperwork, flashlights and foul weather gear.

Below is the first view of our summer home. and we had to wade through all that lovely water to get to the dock. I wore my foulies- pants and jacket- the pants mostly to make me feel better, not because they’d keep me dry. I knew better than that.

POOL? REALLY NOW. LOOKS MORE LIKE A FLOODED PARKING LOT

Our dock was very odd looking- water all around- the deepest was perhaps 3 1/2 ft just before the ramp, and then once you got on to the dock- high and dry for the rest of the walk. Felt very creepy.

GRASSY AREA, GRAVEL PATH.. ALL UNDER WATER

I know Russ was surprised at my- well I won’t call it bravery, willingness perhaps, to brave the waters and get back home asap. Sure, it makes a good story because had he not thought the water would rise more, and we’d waited a couple more hours- guess what? the water would have receded.  Where’s the excitement in that?

AND THAT PILING LOOKED SO TALL BEFORE

If you didn’t look around it was difficult to tell how far up the docks had risen. With our new open cockpit boat we had a great view and so airy too!  No damage and the anchors had performed their assigned task to keep us off the dock. Sunday night was quite windy; more so than expected but we were tied so well the boat hardly moved. Grateful that we and all other boats we saw had fared well, we began moving stuff around (not into place- just around) – let’s see how many days it takes to achieve “normal”.