Shoreline Businesses Brace For Hurricane Earl

Tracking the progress of Hurricane Earl is a serious business for many shoreline tourist attractions this week. While those who live in the path of the storm might be putting away their lawn furniture and boarding up a few windows, attractions that rely on Labor Day visitors will be counting the cost of possible lost customers. WNPR’s Harriet Jones visited Mystic Seaport to monitor storm preparations.

Currently the forecasters tell us that Earl is most likely to pass by Connecticut on Friday night, bringing tropical storm force conditions to coastal regions, and potential winds of up to 50 miles per hour. For Mystic Seaport this is literally the calm before the storm.

"So this is a fishing vessel, they would take out ten of these dories, two men to a dory, five on each side and later on today, there’s a demonstration of that."

Wednesday, docent Rich Pierce was still educating late summer visitors aboard the fishing vessel the LA Dunton, and everything is running as normal.

"The challenge for us as a museum that’s open to the public is to try to stay open if we can but we have to protect what we have."

Spokesman Michael O’Farrell says behind the scenes the staff is already hard at work on hurricane preparations.

"We’ve got to worry about protecting artifacts, all of our tall ships, all of our other vessels that we have in the water. We’ve got to worry about artifacts that are in exhibit buildings we need to make a judgment call if those should come out and get high and dry."

Over at the Seaport’s Preservation Shipyard, the centerpiece of the museum’s collection, the historic whaling ship Charles W. Morgan is already out of the water, in the midst of a 3 year restoration project. Of course wind is the greatest threat to a vessel out of the water. Shipyard director Quentin Snediker:

"By the nature of the restoration work we’re doing, she is very well supported. So we’ve got a tremendous number of shores - that is, props - that hold the vessel up. We do have a contingency plan in place that within about half a day’s work the hull could stand up to nearly anything that would come her way."

But protecting the collection is only half the story for the Seaport, one of Connecticut’s busiest tourist attractions. Michael O’Farrell:

"Probably the biggest thing about this is that it’s coming on Labor Day weekend. This is a big weekend for us and for many people in the Mystic area. A rainy Saturday is bad on any account. A rainy Saturday fueled by a hurricane is even worse."

On a fine Labor Day Weekend, Mystic Seaport would usually expect around 8,000 visitors, bringing as much as $140,000 dollars in admission charges alone. For the museum, and many other tourist attractions and businesses along Connecticut’s shoreline, Earl’s timing could not be worse.

For WNPR, I'm Harriet Jones.