Saturday, November 18, 2017

Boating day

We had visited around our neighborhood via our vessel a cruise of our local canals to see how they were doing post Hurricane Irma.
You see, we do have a whole lot of snowbirds in the area.
Definition of snowbird: northerner who has second home to travel to when the snow or cold weather begins where they live the other half or quarter of the year!

We were never snowbirds when we moved here the deal was final, back on August 19, 1986.
 Although we did vacation here in Florida for short term visits on and off for ten years as a family; once as long as three weeks before then.
But I personally had first come to Florida the winter of 1957-58, and then again the summer of '67.
So we really knew our way around.

Charlotte County has significant mileage of man-made canals, yep fifty-five miles!
All the blue stuff is water and waterways! So we decided to do some touring nearby our own waterway B-7 and the rest of the alphabet area!



We found that many people had more damage than what we had thought.
And many of those who had not had repairs done yet might be of the snowbird variety.
As many lovely yards were there, destroyed looking unkempt were there too... waterfront properties that famously are of the more expensive nature, ya know?

Many hurricanes can do that.

So these people will have a lot to do when they arrive.
And I had mistakenly thought that we did not suffer that badly in our county.
We are on the front lines for most all storms, although no storm surge was incurred apparently we all suffered different amounts of wind damage.
Wind can be nasty!
Leveling homes from the top down.
That is the reason we cover windows to prevent the wind from entering and imploding our homes, not just fear of broken glass!
So tape is just ridiculous!
And portions of pieces of wood of coverage is the same, just plain stupid!

You must logically have the entire window shuttered with fasteners or in recessed windows 3/4" plywood covering with Plylox: http://plylox.com/wp/, creating a suction seal!
Garage doors should be reinforced on the interior with two by fours nailed inside the metal brackets, and/or roll your vehicle against it.
Garages are notorious for allowing the air/wind in to destroy your home!
Lanais now have pop out screening. 

There are so many ways to minimize damage, but if you are not here... you can call a neighbor to do it!
Many folks when they leave to go home up north for the summer they close up their homes with all hurricane protection, sounds like a good idea, hmm?

Not necessarily, fires are harder to put out when no entry is available causing house loss, robberies occur due to looking empty, and on and on...so it's damn if you do and damned if you don't...call the friend idea is the best or hire someone.

After Hurricane Charley I wrote an item for the paper about ghost pools, homes were gone but those in-ground pools stayed without anyone to enjoy them, and became hazards for children and health.
The law went into affect to fence them around that time.

So much weirdness after the disasters, a truck was thrown into a tree, a very high tree... but, ya know something, no matter how many times nature misbehaves we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and start all over again!

On that note allow me to be the very first to wish all of you a very happy good night and ask you to kindly share all your blessings and we will too!

And next time please be here, ya hear!




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