Although Hurricane Irene caused a lot of damage in this area, she was not as destructive as feared. However, the number of homes still without power is in the thousands and it will take several days for the cleanup crews to deal with the downed trees and power lines. Mobile cranes are busy lifting downed trees out of backyards.
We were prepared for the worst and are glad we got off easy with the highest wind gusts clocked at 42 knots at our location. Generally speaking, the wind hovered between 25 and 30 knots. Just so you know what kind of preparations I'm talking about to get prepared:
The day before the storm Benno dove on the mooring ball checking the heavy chain and swivel to make sure the mooring would be up to the punishment. While being in the water he cleaned Diesel Duck's propeller and the props of the bow thrusters. The engine cooling water inlet got an inspection and a little cleanup too.
In addition to our 5/8", 25 foot mooring pennant, we fitted an additional heavy weather 1 inch 3 stranded Nylon mooring pennant of 30 feet and an extra line to extend the shorter one.
Topside on Diesel Duck we removed both sails, folded them into neat packets and stowed them below. The flag halyard got removed as well as the two washdown hoses and the boat hook. The Caribe 9' dinghy was hoisted up and tied down on the aft deck. The 15 hp Yamaha outboard motor(2 stroke) was lifted onto the bracket at the stern rail and the gas tank tied to the mast.
With the generator running, our watermaker topped up our water tanks with fresh drinking water in case the water in the creek and bay would be contaminated during the storm and we would not be able to make any water for some time to come. Just imagine the water treatment plants of the city's of Baltimore or Annapolis would be overflowing during the storm and be dumping zillions of gallons of untreated raw sewage into the bay's water. Don't laugh, but this has happened elsewhere.
Benno cleaned both raw water strainers for our main diesel and the generator, because there is always the possibility that one would have to start the main engine and shift it into gear to assist the mooring in the extrem strong winds.
After all these preparations we sat back and relaxed with a book!

The picture was taken the morning after Irene had passed. The officials are right on the task.