Spaniards' First Hurricane

If I had known there was a hurricane brewing in the Atlantic in late October, I possibly would have reconsidered my trip...

Ok that's a lie... but Sandy seriously came as a huge surprise to me! I found out while my dad was driving us down the Southern State parkway. I almost missed it while admiring the beautiful foliage! 

Another Hurricane???? I always seem to come home just in time for extreme weather and natural disasters! December 2010: Noreaster with inches and inches of snow, closing airports for 2 days.  August/September 2011: freak-earthquake followed by Hurricane Irene.

Just my luck.

Well, thanks to Irene of 2011, I didn't take Sandy so seriously. Long Island news loves to hype up hurricanes, next thing you know people are clearing supermarkets of bread, water, and non perishables. People are strapping generators onto their cars, and loading up sandbags. What happens next? Nothing. Some rain, a little  power outage, and a some wind gusts.

This is my house.... note the lack of water under the deck area

Well this year was different. 

Stores started closing the day before the hurricane at 5 pm... meanwhile wind gusts picked up. The clouds made their way in, and so did the fear. Ok, its time to take this seriously. I cancelled my trip to my University to see my best friends ever (sad face) and decided if I have to be stranded someplace, I'd rather be stranded in my parents house with them, rather than in central new york with townies. 

Anyway, Monday we decided to take full advantage of cable and electricity, fearing the inevitable: power outages. Low and behold, around 430pm, during the last 3 minutes of Hocus Pocus, the power went out. 

We taped up windows, removed lawn furniture, parked the cars on the highest part of our lawn. Bring it on Sandy!

Right before nightfall, disaster struck! Our boat, Hawaii Kai broke loose from her bulkhead! She started swinging around, hanging on by one rope. We all put on some crappy clothes, broke out the galoshes and life vests  and went out to the battlefield. We tred through the water which was up to our knees immediately. Dad quickly demanded I go back into the house where it was safe and dry, but I decided to play on the deck instead. 

the 90 mph wind gusts were almost too much to handle!

Finally the boat was tied securely to the dock. Time to take things extra seriously.... So we got some boards and using light from pocket sized flashlights, we boarded up our large sliding door/window that sounded like it was about to break.

Then we broke out the glowsticks and the dance moves.... and wine and cheese. 
Hurricane party!
We kept an eye on the boat, but it was hard to see... until suddenly the boat came into vision! Where is that light coming from? The full moon! One of the dangerous factors of Hurricane Sandy.... that whore. 

By 9pm, I was exhausted, so we cuddled up into bed, and fell asleep to the sound of the wind shaking the house. 

I felt like a kid on christmas, I couldn't sleep! At 2 am I crawled out of bed with my flashlight to investigate:
Street and yard: Flooded
Garage: Flooded
Boat: sideways. I slightly panicked... until I saw that the boat had ripped out the dock it was secured to, and trapped itself into our boat slip. Better than nothing. 

The next morning we surveyed the damage. Flooding in the basement and garage, one damaged car, a beached boat. Could have been worse.

As for a Spaniards' perspective? I believed that he loved it. It was exciting and thrilling, especially because we were safe the whole time. Although we lost power for 48 hours, we were able to visit grandma's house to shower and have a pizza =)

I think Estebans favorite part of the hurricane was definately the clean up. He got to use lots of tools, wear big yellow boots, and drive a lawnmower... his first week on lawn duty and he did great!

could be the cover of a newspaper

S.O.S SAVE OUR SHIP!