We closed on our new house about 36 hours before Ike hit. My wife's company built it so we were willing to take the risk since there had been a couple delays and the loan approval would have expired. Not a scratch on the house but we couldn't move in immediately because there was no power in the neighborhood for 2 weeks. We ended up moving almost all of our belongings into the house but kept a bed, TV, and clothes at our apartment ITL since the lease didn't run out for about another month. My office at the time sustained heavy damage and we were locked out so I was able to spend a bunch of time at the new house unpacking and doing the little projects that come up. We never even lost power at the apartment.

And at that time my dad kept his sailboat at Watergate Yacht Club in Kemah, I went down before the storm to help him batten down the hatches. We completely removed the sails and as much rigging as possible, added some extra lines, and made sure the hatches were sealed. When we're able to go down and check it out and see how his boat made it through the storm. His boat made it through without a scratch- in fact, it looked like the decks had been power-washed. However, his boat was in a slip about halfway down the pier and at literally the next slip past him, the pier was completely gone except for the pilings. The boats immediately next to his on both sides sank as did the boat across the pier from him. Boats that had been moored in slips farther out on the pier were gone, where they went we have no idea. There were multiple large boats (power & sail) over 35-40' in length that were picked up and deposited in the parking lot and there were some that had sunk out in the marina. There was even one sailboat that had evidently been directly on top of a piling when the storm surge receded and as it settled the piling punched a hole in the bottom, impaling the boat a good 8 feet above the water. There was probably $10MM worth of boats within 100 yards of my father's which were trashed. He even had a friend who rode out Ike on his boat while it was moored in Galveston Bay.

I'll see if I can find pictures. His boat was moored about where this pin was dropped in Google Maps: Watergate Yacht Club. He keeps it at Legend Point now.

I remember. I rode out Ike watching from my balcony/parking garage in Midtown. Watched the flames from Brennan's going up in smoke. It was also the point in which I learned that having an iPhone was worth the expense. I had just bought one with the free 30 day return guarantee and was thinking it was just a toy. But when Ike hit and I was able to see the weather updates and follow the news despite the power being out, I was hooked.

94chem said:

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He even had a friend who rode out Ike on his boat while it was moored in Galveston Bay.

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What the? Lieutenant Dan?

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Actually his name is Captain Bob. I don't know the dude's last name but he's an odd cat. He's been married & divorced like 6 times, former Coast Guard, licensed captain who runs charters, does sail-rigging & maintenance for folks in the area, and lives on a 60' sailboat. Interesting guy.

But yeah, he sailed out into the bay for Ike, put out a couple of really long anchor rodes, battened down the hatches, and rode out Ike on his boat. Claims he slept through it.

I'd be interested to see because I spent a lot of time as a teen in Watergate. My dad's best friend was a big sailor (had captains license and all) and always had a boat there. When I was 15, he bought a 46' Morgan from a guy in Florida, and my dad and I went with him and another couple of friends (all aside from me had made the trek across the Gulf before) to sail it back. Took us about a week and I had a lot of fun and learned a lot as well. One of the best times of my life. He kept it in this spot for years while he got it the way he wanted to live on it full-time, and my dad and I would go up almost every weekend to help him as well or to just sail around. For a while, he kept his 29' Sea Ray in the slip next to it until he decided he didn't need 2 boats.

About 5 years ago, he took an early retirement and he and his wife set sail to live the life of Jimmy Buffett that he's always dreamed of in the Caribbean. He's still out there and anchors off of different islands and takes the dinghy into shore to shop and pay their fishing fees to catch crab/lobster/fish to cook. Dude is living the life. Every picture he posts on FB is him shirtless. I'm convinced he has about 100 swim suits and maybe 2 shirts.

Speaking of riding out hurricanes in a boat...one of my best friends from HS is a big sailor as well. He bought a small (~30') boat when he got out of the Navy and kept it in Jacksonville while he was at UF, and he now lives on it in Tampa while he's in medical school (yep...started med school at 36). When the hurricane hit Tampa last year, he told me he was riding the storm out on his boat, and I'd occasionally get gifs and quotes of Lt. Dan from Forrest Gump when he was riding out the storm. He made it through OK.

I'll see what I can find on the pics. This was pre-iPhone days for me so the pics may be on actual developed film and not digital.

My old man got his captain's license a few years ago. He'll occasionally skipper charters for this outfit: Windsong Charters

Ike was a wind event.

So, for me, 12 days without power. Harvey: 2.5 days.
Didn't flood either time, so Ike was actually worse on a personal level.
Chasing bags of ice all over town for my 80 year old mom, who had a nasty chest cold; very worrisome.
Ugh.

BUT...Rita w/NO H-town impact was horrible. 14 hours from Houston to Bellville. Idling amidst the dirty disposable diapers on I-10W. My auto thermometer read 138 degree air temp at one point. Oh, 3 families, two cars...and 5 cats, who behaved better than the humans. Learned never to try to flee Houston.

T&P for our new Clemson friends and all who face Flo.

Cool. I'd appreciate that. I would love to get a sailboat one day and have always dreamed of retiring on one. My wife doesn't want to, but I hopefully have another 25-30 years to change her mind.

Frank would occasionally get into a riff with the management at WYC, and move his boat. Soon after we got the boat back from Florida, they got into it and he moved it over to the marina that's now over by the bardwalk. That was an awesome place since it was before it got taken over by Landry's and commercialized. I remember going over to the Flying Dutchman and watching the dude who would sing Buffett songs every Friday night. The boat used in Captain Ron was docked a few slips over (The Wonderer), so that was pretty cool. I also remember being 16 and partying at South Shore after the parade of lights the boats do around Christmas. My parents knew I'd try to sneak alcohol, so they were pretty up front with me and allowed me to have some of the margaritas they were making. I also so several women flashing their uptops around...some nice while some shouldn't be shown...like the lady that was obviously in her 60's.

88jrt06 said:

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Ike was a wind event.

So, for me, 12 days without power. Harvey: 2.5 days.
Didn't flood either time, so Ike was actually worse on a personal level.
Chasing bags of ice all over town for my 80 year old mom, who had a nasty chest cold; very worrisome.
Ugh.

BUT...Rita w/NO H-town impact was horrible. 14 hours from Houston to Bellville. Idling amidst the dirty disposable diapers on I-10W. My auto thermometer read 138 degree air temp at one point. Oh, 3 families, two cars...and 5 cats, who behaved better than the humans. Learned never to try to flee Houston.

T&P for our new Clemson friends and all who face Flo.

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Depended on where you were located. If you were anywhere close to the coast it was a flood event.

Harvey was a cat 4 but had a storm surge at landfall smaller than Ike. IIRC, Harvey's surge was about 10-12 feet while Ike was like 21-22'.

The main difference being the amount of precipitation. Harvey's flooding was brought on by the 4-5' of rainfall (depending on location, IIRC much of Houston saw around 50" while Nederland recorded over 62" of rain). Ike didn't have anything near that.

Just shows how differing storms can have similar impact- Ike wasn't near the wind event of Harvey and had far less rainfall. But, because Ike was a slow-moving storm of huge size (though lower intensity) it built up a monster storm surge. Harvey caused more wind damage and when it camped out over SE Texas dumping rain the flooding that followed was disastrous.

I moved into my first post college apartment 2 days before IKE hit. I have since lived in a duplex and now own a house. I had forgotten the exact date, but I'll never forget the big storms.

I watched Brennans burn down in Midtown. Stayed up partying all night in the hallways of 2222 Smith.

The pic from the overpass of all the boats/debris is amazing. I live in Texas City and State Farm paid for a new roof due to Ike. I evacuated to Austin.

I slept through most of Ike. My dad woke me up when the eye came over Baytown. It was an eerie calm. Stayed awake for the back side of the storm and will never forget the sound of trees falling around the house. We were without power for a couple of weeks. God gave us a break and sent a cool front through a couple of days later which made it a little more bearable sleeping with the windows open.

Slept right through the storm. Woke up and surveyed the street - limbs and leaves everywhere.

Still sprinkling and I look out and all my neighbors are out cleaning up their yards. I'm like "are you kidding me, can we at least let it stop raining first?" Of course wife sees this. So our entire family gets dressed in rain gear and out we go. Four hours later, we along with all our neighbors have turned the grass section between the street and sidewalk into the Ike Dike. Literally a continuous mountain of yard debris.

We empty our refrigerator into coolers and head to the home of our friends (who are in Big Bend) - they have a natural gas generator which runs their downstairs. So we have AC, power, and more importantly an ice maker.

I clean their yard and pool over the next few days, and everynight other friends would show up with coolers of food to grill and to take back ice. It was a pool party every night for a week.

Our experience with Ike started with us getting to watch our boat burn up in a dry storage unit down in Galveston on live TV.



Later, as Ike came across town, we got to listen to chunks of shingles being torn off the roof and water starting to drip through the ceiling as we tried to sleep in the hallway away from the windows. It was annoying, because just as soon as we would start to drift off, we would hear another new drip start, and would have to wander through the house looking for it so we could put a bucket or bowl under it. In the end, we got a new roof, new floors, and a bunch of new sheet rock out of it. I also learned that if you put a great big tarp over your roof and staple it down, the insurance adjuster isn't going to ask you to lift it up to show how many shingles were actually lost. In our case, we had plenty enough to justify the new roof even if he had wanted to look under the tarp...but a few of our neighbors who only lost a few didn't put a big tarp up, and only got paid to patch the roof, not to replace it.

I'd like to thank Hurricane Ike for my MS Geology degree. Fun times coring the island.

TXAG14 said:

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I slept through most of Ike.

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Didn't sleep through Ike but wasn't all that worried. We closed on our house at my wife's offices (since the title company was closed) on the afternoon of the 11th. We got the keys to our new home and met some friends who lived on the Upper East Side at the house with champagne to toast our new home. Then we went to their home and spent Friday the 12th making sure things were secure and we were well supplied. The other husband and I sat up and got drunk and smoked a whole lot of cigarettes as Ike rolled through. During the day on Saturday after Ike came ashore I went to check on the new house and it was without a scratch.

Eye went right up I-45 with category 2 winds. Slept through much of it until the wife woke me up just as the eye finished passing over and the worst winds hit, and knocked a 70' pine tree in my back yard over onto my neighbor's roof and our fence. Fortunately only the top of the tree reached his house and it broke off on his roof.

Aside from that, we were all out with brooms and chainsaws and shovels before the wind died down and the rain stopped. Spring got wrecked. All those old growth pines and oaks fell all over the powelines. 12 days of portable generators buzzing away every night until we got power back.

Big Cat `93 said:

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Most memorable thing for me was the unexpected nice, relatively cool weather while AC-less during the power outage. And my neighbors one street over getting their power back almost 2 days before I did.

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That was actually pretty crazy. Weather wouldn't have been more pleasant during a summer time power outage.

I laid in bed at my dad's house in Atascocita while the storm came through. I remember laying in bed and hearing the power start to flicker before going out. Then as the storm got more intense, I remember looking at the window right near my face and thinking "no way in hell" and laid down on the floor. Hard floor coupled with a hot room and gnarly storm means I didn't sleep well. I finally got to sleep around the time the eye was passing over, and my dad woke me up to go help him brace up an effing tree. So, we were outside tying up a tree with straps to brick columns on the porch as well as putting boards against it to keep it from falling over any more. We did save it and it's still standing today.

I was also in the process of closing on a townhouse when the storm hit, so I had given my notice at my apartment. For 2 years I had a branch obstructing my view from my porch of the hotties at the pool. Sure enough, Ike took that branch out (only branch lost in my area of the complex) and gave me a beautiful view for the last week or so when the pool wasn't being used.

Insurance pays for damage from wind correct?

Ags #1 said:

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Insurance pays for damage from wind correct?

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Depends on your company and policy. But yes, most homeowners insurance covers wind damage, including water in the house caused by wind damage. But most will not cover rising water (flood) damage.

Thanks, Boo.

Good Aggie Hunting said:

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I remember reading a claim here that the bear was a poster on this board.

It was interesting seeing some Ike recaps on the news today. Between the power outage and all the cleanup, my news access was kind of spotty that week.

RIP Balinese Room