Come on Irene

Queue bad karaoke version of Dexys Midnight Runners... Nevermind; probably means nothing if you didn't grow up in the 80's.  Anyway, Irene has fizzled out and left behind a mess, but fortunately Magic and the boatshed made it through unscathed, despite a few scary moments.

I was never too worried regarding the structure of the shed in the predicted 40-60 mph winds, but the forecast for 4-8 inches of rain dampened my spirits (pun intended).  I don't live in a flood prone area but when we get that much rain and some wind, we generally get a bunch of downed trees.  The forest on our property is predominately Eastern White Pine and some are quite mature with crowns in the 100 foot range, so when they come down, you know it.  There aren't any big ones near the boatshed but there are a few maples that could make a mess of things if they came down on it.

I checked on the shed a few times during the day and all was well, not a drop of water on the boat, so there wasn't much to worry about.  We lost power all day so sanding was not an option and I went to bed around 10. I thought the storm was over because the rain had stopped and the wind had died to nothing.  Unfortunately, at around 1 am or so, another wave came through with much more force that what I had seen during the day. The winds sounded like a jet coming through and the first sickening crack I heard was a very big willow tree coming down on our garden shed next to the house (although I didn't know it until this morning).  The tree delivered a glancing blow that shattered one of the rafters and ripped a bunch of shingles off, but the worst thing was that the tree came to rest on top of our vegetable garden.  Direct hit, it literally turned the garden into tomato paste.   I heard several more loud cracks coming from the direction of the boatshed but knew there wasn't anything I could do.  Quite a helpless feeling.

With the exception of the garden shed that took the willow beat down, we lucked out.  A decent sized silver birch and a giant white pine (~2.5 feet diameter) came crashing down about 50 and 150 feet away from the boatshed respectively.  I'll cut up the birch for firewood and let the pine lay where it fell, but my first order of business is to clean up the garden shed mess.  Hopefully, I can get this cleaned up quickly and I can get back to boatwork.