Help a fellow VJB Brother out!!! Hurricane Sandy wreaks havoc on my jet boat

Thoughts and prayers for you and your family and everyone else affected.

man I don't know what to say other than stay strong ond get through it.
things like this really make you think over your place in life and be thankful for the people in ones life.
prayers to you and your family .

thank you for your kind words. we are new yorkers and will pull thru whether it's 9-11 or hurricane sandy

Man oh man so sorry to hear this news... Do you have a PayPal email...? I don't have much here but I'd love to help a bit...?
I'm sure other member's will pitch in too!!!

i appreciate the kind offer but we are ok and will recover from this. things are very crazy right now the gas lines are completely insane and like a mile long and i am not making this up. there have been fights, knives pulled on attendants and rumors of guns being pulled. my house is about one block from the water and during the storm i had lost power and me and the family listened in horror to the police/fire scanner and heard the dispatcher calling in to the police on patrol that people where in their attics because the water was up to the second floor and the police responce was they could not get anywhere near them to help. just in my town there where over 17 homes that night that burned and more came later. one town lost over 110 homes burnt to the foundation. if you would like to help maybe make donations to the red cross foundation they could use the help right now. but thanks again for all the kind words.

Anything you need brother, LET US KNOW! Stay strong...

Originally Posted by lowfunds

i appreciate the kind offer but we are ok and will recover from this. things are very crazy right now the gas lines are completely insane and like a mile long and i am not making this up. there have been fights, knives pulled on attendants and rumors of guns being pulled. my house is about one block from the water and during the storm i had lost power and me and the family listened in horror to the police/fire scanner and heard the dispatcher calling in to the police on patrol that people where in their attics because the water was up to the second floor and the police responce was they could not get anywhere near them to help. just in my town there where over 17 homes that night that burned and more came later. one town lost over 110 homes burnt to the foundation. if you would like to help maybe make donations to the red cross foundation they could use the help right now. but thanks again for all the kind words.

Been watching the news and I can see it's bad there!!
Please let us know if we can do anything for you directly!!!

Your outlook and strength in this catastrophe, is fantastic! If you find, you need some help. Please let us know! We are a very dedicated group of people. Family and Friends are pretty close to One & the Same. Steve

thank you its great to know there are people out there willing to help. its also nice to break away from the long hard days of work and come here to chat and feel some sense of normal. i actually spent five minutes on my lunchtime to inspect the jet boat and found that even though i covered the input shaft with a plastic bag water still got into the new bearing i recently installed when i rebuilt the jet. got in there with some wd-40 and sprayed the crap out of it. other than that thats all i had time for.

as if things couldnt get worse we are now getting slammed with a noreaster. it started raining, then sleeting, and now its freaking snowing plus we are suppose to have 5' higher than normal water tides. we just can't get a break. at my job we have been using a 15,000 watt generator to run the shop for heat, electric, and plus there are a few little bungalow apartments we had to get up and running for people to live. that generator is running it all day and night. my ears have been ringing from the noise it gives off. you can't really escape the noise from them everywhere you go due to power outages. one of the guys i work with lives in a area hit extremely hard he is also in the FD in his town. he came in today and told us he had over 7-8' of water in his home and his fire house had five feet. it's completely insane.

Wow...praying that this is a once in centuries weather system yall are getting. A good hard freeze wont help in getting the infrastructure back up again.

Hang in There Low Funds! We are all Praying for you guys! Stay warm!

well i finally made it back here. im sure most of you know by now just how bad sandy has hit my area. i have been busy at work for the last month. my boss and the marina down the street have teamed up and where hired by BOATUS Insurance Company to retrieve the boats they insure that where effected by the storm. we are going around with a hired 50 ton mobile crane and crew of 2 to get either a single pick or multiple boats. i spent a entire week plus in just 2 homes yards. there was a yacht club across the way from these multimillion dollar homes that lost almost their entire fleet including their floating docks. the yacht club had to be atleast 300+ yards away and some of the boats that where winterized and onland came across with no outdrives on them without sinking so that will give you a idea how big and fast the tide surge came. this storm hit on a full moon high tide too plus the 8-10 feet of water on top of that from the storm. the was four homes in this neighborhood but we only worked 2 because the people that owned the other homes would not allow us to touch any of the boats until they had everyones insurance and knew they where getting paid for their damages to their properties. getting the crane in these yards was a tough task because the ground was so soft we had to lay 2-4000 pound plates on the ground so the crane could drive on them without sinking in. neverless it was a very time consuming and pyhsical month. i have lots of pictures of boats in swimming pools, homes, and just all over the place. we picked anything from a 15'boston whaler to a 52' commercial fishing boat. it has been completely crazy. i have seen homes completely lifted off their foundations to homes completely burned to the foundation and only thing standing is the chimney and what ever metal things that did not melt down like autos. i have seen aerial views of a abandoned Grumman airport where they use to test fly F-14 fighters out of completely filled with autos lost in the storm over 300,000 plus cars. this has been the worst thing i have seen here in my 43 years im alive and hope to never see again. as far as my jetboat i will have some time next week to bring back in my shop and assess the damage after it sunk in my shop on the trailer.

Don't know about everyone else, but would love to see some of the pics you took, posted...

ill try some here is one small yard by my job had 9 boats in it

and one of the marina that we teamed up with i have yet to upload the rest from my cell phone sorry

WOW!!!

Glad you're okay, take care man...

these where taken just 2 days after the storm the tide was still high but picture another 8 feet on top of that. gives you a idea how high it was

heres the 52' commercial fishing boat. thats me all the way to the right holding the teather line

here is the homes with all the boats we spent entire week+ picking this picture is looking from one yard into the next


here is the one in the swimming pool in that pile of boats

this catamaran came on shore with the guys floating dock smashed into his home and ripped the garage off the home and foundation and got wedged between his home the garage a tree and his neighbors home. we had to pick from the driveway swing the crane boom over the home and go around the far side of the home to get it on a truck.