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Friday, March 29, 2024

Boaters scramble to move vessels to safety

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With choreography to rival a ballet, a lineup of trucks with trailers at the Wrightsville Beach public boat dock Wednesday prepared for the possibility of Hurricane Matthew by moving their boats to safer places.

“It’s a madhouse out here,” said Sid Brooks, as he tied his 18-foot Edgewater to the dock and made his way to his truck and trailer. “It may be OK, but better safe than sorry.”

Brooks, who said he would store his boat at the high ground of his daughter’s Wilmington house, did what many owners who dock boats in Wrightsville Beach did this week: move it to safety.

Jay Hessenius, the service manager at MarineMax in Wrightsville Beach, said the docks were busy all week with boaters moving from wet slips to dry land.

With the first indications of an approaching storm, last Thursday Hessenius urged owners who dock or store boats at the marina to consider moving them over the weekend. And on Wednesday, MarineMax closed its services to clients that still hadn’t moved the boats from slips or dry docks. He said the facility would be closed to clients from Thursday Oct. 6 through Monday Oct. 10, marking Tuesday as a day to resume normal business.

Several of the boats at MarineMax were stored on outdoor racks. Despite the fact that the boats could be exposed to hurricane-force winds, the sheer weight of the vessels on the rack’s bottom row was enough to keep them secured, he said.

“Wind speeds in the 200s could be a problem,” he said. “But then, we’d have bigger problems than losing some boats.”

Not all boats had to be removed from the marina, Hessenius said. The docks that were secured with a concrete piling still had boats attached, though staff double-tied the lines to make them more secure. The boats were aligned so that the bow would face the wind, absorbing its force.

With everything outside secured, Hessenius said he was monitoring conditions for potential storm surge, where flooding could force his staff to move equipment at the facility to the second level.

“What concerns me the most is if the storm arrives at high tide,” Hessenius said.

Adam Meyer, director of marine insurance for Wells Insurance, was one of the boaters getting his vessel out of the water Wednesday. He was following the same advice he said he gave to hundreds of clients this week.

“If it’s a smaller boat, get it out of the water,” Meyer said, adding that removing the canvas and draining it were other essential preparations.

For bigger boats, if hauling it out of the water isn’t an option, it should be moved to an inland river location, he said. Insurance carriers require most larger boats to have a storm plan, which boat owners should be following, Meyer said.

In fact, many policies come with hurricane haul-out reimbursement provisions that will compensate owners for the costs of moving their boat to safety.

“It’s certainly cheaper than replacing or repairing the boat,” Meyer said.

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