photo courtesy of ESA

Preparing boat and home for a hurricane this powerful is a daunting task--and then there’s simply trying to get out of its way along with several other million people trying to do the same thing.

A high-pressure ridge kept Hurricane Rita south of Galveston County during most of the four days she spent in the Gulf of Mexico, but there was considerable uncertainty as to how long that ridge would hold. By Monday, it looked as if we should start preparing for the worse.

I went down to Wildfire, our 38-foot Irwin sailboat, on Tuesday, and continued preparing it for Hurricane Rita through Wednesday. We keep Wildfire at Lakewood Yacht Club, which is in Seabrook, on Galveston Bay about halfway between the Houston Ship Channel and the Galveston Jetties. Since I’m the sailor in the family and my husband tolerates--but does not love--our boat, I was responsible for taking care of it. I had already removed both headsails and lashed down the main in advance of Hurricane Emily. The two headsails were still off and I wanted to remove the main also, but it was too heavy for me to move and no one was available to help me take it down. I added additional lashing to the main, moved the boat to a floating dock, took the bimini and stanchions down, doubled and chafe-proofed all her lines, and stowed everything as safely as I could so items in the interior wouldn’t destroy the boat from the inside out. I then emptied the dock box and took everything that could fly off the topsides and out of the coaming recesses.

I left the power on for the batteries and the bilge pump but turned off everything else except the converter. The dinghy was stored in a rack with others, and I turned it right-side up, deflated it, filled it with water and lashed it to the rack structure. The work took its toll and I fell ill from heat exhaustion on Tuesday, so had to work very slowly on Wednesday--working for 20 minutes, then spending 10 minutes in the pool cooling off, then working for 20 more minutes.

As the ridge began to break up it looked as if Rita would score a direct hit on Galveston, and that is when we made the decision to evacuate. Wednesday evening we cleared everything out of the yard that might turn into a missile, and put it in the garage. There are 25 windows on our house, so we could not physically tackle the job of boarding up, and by that time we thought it unlikely that we could find anyone to hire to do it. We packed and loaded up both vehicles, one SUV and one pickup truck, before going to bed. We also took the gas tank for the dinghy; it was empty, but we expected to be able to fill it along the way.

Thursday morning we grabbed some coffee, put the cats in the truck with me along with some cat food, water and litter, and headed out at 5:30 a.m. for the town of Bastrop, near Austin. Our daughter had managed to find us one of the few rooms available within 300 miles of Houston. We left to predictions that Rita was a Category-4, and would very likely churn right up Galveston Bay. I expected to lose the boat for sure, and I thought the windows of my house would blow out, leaving the wind to scatter the contents and letting in rainwater to drench the interior. During the drive, the high pressure ridge broke up faster than anyone had expected, causing the storm to hit the Texas-Louisiana border, and by the time we arrived in Bastrop, I was confident that the damage to boat and home would be limited.

The drive was as horrible as it looked on CNN. We got to our chosen evacuation route quickly enough, but came to a screeching halt as soon as we got there. We crawled along State Highway 290, stopping and starting and waiting, covering about 25 miles in 9 hours or so. The temperature climbed to 102, adding to the misery of those who had run out of gas along the roadside. A construction site with five Port-A-Potties was as popular a destination as Disneyland. We checked numerous gas stations along the way, but all were out of gas. Finally, concerned for our dwindling fuel supply, we left the main highway and drove to the little town of Bellville. The trip there was quick but once near town, we crept along, covering perhaps eight miles in two or three hours. We turned the two-lane roads into one-way roads, and eventually made our way to a gas station where there were a lot of cars, but no gas. We had just decided to transfer the remaining fuel from the SUV to the truck and abandon the SUV when a fuel tanker arrived. We waited another hour to get it, but we left with two vehicles full of fuel and a full three-gallon dinghy tank as backup.

Meanwhile, the Bellville police had converted all roads in their town to one-way and sent everyone north towards the evacuation route. We moved at a comfortable 45 mph and reached the highway about 35 miles west of where we had left it. At a mall near the highway, where perhaps 500 cars were stopped, we bought a couple of items at the supermarket where the clerk suggested another back-road route to Bastrop. We took her advice, and things looked grim for the first three or four miles. We soon realized that the delays were not gridlock, they were lines of cars waiting for – and getting--gas! /FONT>

Somehow, the authorities had put the pedal to the metal and fuel was beginning to reach the stations along the main evacuation routes. Once we got past the stations, we drove the indirect 70-mile route to Bastrop in about two hours. We arrived at the hotel, where our daughter was waiting for us with real food, at 12:30 am Friday, nineteen hours after we left home.

Most everyone in the hotel was from the Houston area, and the standard greeting became, "Where did you come from, and how long did it take you to get here?" Nineteen hours was about average; some people found quick back ways out and others were on the road for over 30 hours. By Sunday morning, we called our town emergency management office and learned that there had been no substantial damage, and friends called to tell us that the boat was undamaged. We stayed until Monday, when we were told we could return.

I learned some interesting things during this uninvited adventure: About moving restrooms, I learned that it is really hard to pee in a bottle in stop-and-go traffic; this feat is, surprisingly, no easier for men than for women. It takes about two minutes to get everything in the proper alignment, and that is when the traffic moves, so you have to go back and start over. I learned that when you are in mid-pee, the car in front of you will inevitably pull ahead, leaving a small space into which some other car will immediately duck under the delusion that your lane is moving faster than theirs.

About living the news, I learned that it is a lot better to watch things happening on CNN than to be part of them while the rest of the world is watching you. About cats, I learned that despite their reputation, cats can be excellent travelers. About survival food, I learned that Granola bars do not provide enough nourishment for 19 hours, no matter how many of them you eat.

photo courtesy of www.1ststep.org

The unbridled power of a hurricane can turn boats into playthings--but boats can be replaced. People can not.

About my fellow human beings, I learned that the cliché is true; disasters bring out the best and the worst in people --a gas station owner who had raised his prices by 50 cents a gallon piously opined to us that hurricanes were "God’s will", while small-town church and civic groups set up tables by the roadside and ran back and forth in the heat to give ice water to the hot, thirsty drivers crawling by. The Fire Chief of Bastrop apparently shared his home with a family of 12 whose caravan had run out of gas, and the same sort of kindness was doubtless to be found all over the state.

I learned that decency is not a political party. Bill White, the mayor of Houston and a Democrat, and Robert Eckles, the Harris County Judge and a Republican, exhibited superb cooperative decision-making, just as they had done during Hurricane Katrina. About kids, I learned that I am so glad I didn't kill my daughter when she was a teenager. We arrived, exhausted, at a small but comfortable room containing a microwave and a refrigerator, which she had stocked with real food. She spent the night with us, sleeping on the floor with the extra pillow we had brought and using the comforter from the bed as a sleeping bag. About life, I learned that when people say, "Possessions can be replaced, but what matters is loved ones," they aren't just whistling Dixie. I woke up Friday morning after only a few hours of sleep, overwhelmed with happiness to have my husband, my daughter and my cats all in the same little room with me. As much as I love Wildfire, I could have and would have replaced her, but my family is priceless.