Tropical depression / Hurricane Tomas...
So this whole issue with this enormous low approaching off the coast of South America started yesterday afternoon.. The radios started broadcasting the approaching distortion during the early afternoon... The radio stations were all over this for the rest of the day by having people talking about hurricane preparedness and so on ..When I looked at the models in the evening it sure looked like the low was heading straight for "our" marina " ... UPS.... but at the same time the experts on the radio or the Internet kept mentioning that for the system to develop properly it would have to move up north first ...and sure enough when I checked in the morning that's exactly what happen - it seemed rather clear to me that the system would strike somewhere north of Grenada..
**** but here comes the "funny" part .. I didn't check the progress all day long but early in the afternoon people were starting to move boats out of the water in astonishing rates ???
Lot's of boats ! Boats that just where lunched the day before !
The yard got in emergency mode- they put sand bags in front of all doors at street level - they even moved my rudder into the shop as they were worried it would get flushed away ??? (we are expecting heavy rains)
Anyway .. somebody told me that the whole thing started with a local guy pulling his boat out and everybody else just "panicked"..
(schools where closing early today also - some schools didn't even open - regardless of the media telling them not to panic ..)
This was a good day for the Yard - haul outs run between $500-1000 ( Times 2 if you don't want to miss the season :-))
- Now maybe we were just lucky this time - but I think looking at the models online around 3Pm should have clearly shown that it would pass Trinidad by a big margin)
Now for the other islands, this is a different story I would not want to be up there right now ..... If this would happen in about two weeks that would be a serious problem for me, as once you pass Grenada there is "nowhere" to go anymore... Ill keep my fingers crossed :-)