m/v Kinvara II: Hurricane Matthew The End of The Road For Now

Saturday October 8, 2016
Atlantic Yacht Basin

We were glued to watching Hurricane Matthew batter Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. Somehow we were not too worried about our location since the storm was suppose to track to the east fairly quickly. Unfortunately we underestimated the size of the storm. We experienced solid torrential rain from Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning. The winds did pick up but being in the shed we did not have much effect from it. Unfortunately the rain pounding onto the corrugated metal roof over us was deafening. We ended up being awake most of the time overnight checking lines and the water level. By morning we had risen 4-5' in our fixed dock space. We were fine but all the docks were underwater. At 6am a marina worker was wading through the water checking on lines and boat conditions. Sunday was a day to catch up on lost sleep, texting friends, and watching Amazon video and shows through our cell phone. It has been a godsend to have 10 G data each but also the ability to stream shows under the T mobile Binge On feature.....it doesn't count against your data! Thank goodness we have a strong signal here. By 4 pm the rain eventually stopped, the sun came out. and the water level dropped about a foot so we decided to put our boots on and try to get to the canal front to see what it looked like. The dock worker told us it was all under water. We got about half way and had to turn around because the water was too close to the top of our boots. We did not want this water to pour into them!!

The blue pin is our location
in Chesapeake, VA

Water up to his knees on the fixed doc

No dock visible!

Trying to get off the boat!

Smiling but it really was not funny!

Monday morning we woke and saw a dock! So ashore we went to see what had happened. This was the highest flooding the marina had experienced. The water had flooded all the buildings. By the time we got up to them it had receded but left a lot of damage. The marine store lost inventory, the machine shop tools and machines were flooded, the bathrooms were closed off for cleaning. One boat had to row their dinghy across the flooded area to get some ground for their dog to relieve itself!!
We started checking cruising sites like Waterway Guide and Salty Southeast Cruisers guide and found some bad news. The 2 lift bridges east of us were closed due to high water and no electricity, The NC coast guard closed the Virginia-Albermarle canal at the NC line. They said it would be up to 2 weeks to check debris and navigational markers for it to be safe for boaters. The Dismal Swamp Canal is also closed. So our pathway to get south was closed off and we faced staying here for at least 2 more weeks. North Carolina did not get hit quite as hard as South Carolina and Georgia so our concerns for severe shoaling along the way as well as floating and sunken debris and navigation markers being destroyed or moved were well founded. The difficult decision was made to leave our boat here in indoor storage for the winter. We will come back in April and bring Kinvara II back to Rhode Island.
It is not worth the stress, time, and potential damage to continue for us. We have started packing and have a car rented so we will leave here Friday morning and drive 12-13 hours back to our home in Florida. Hopefully we don't find any damage there from the hurricane! Our neighbors said the outside was fine....now we need to check the inside.