People in our age group probably have some good memories of the disco music time and the name Sandy is special (Who knows??). Hurricane Sandy, currently in the Atlantic Ocean moving North/West will probably merge with a cold front and create a very big storm in one of the most populated areas in the USA. But Sandy has already caused a lot of problems, reportedly 51 people lost their lives and over 200,000 people lost their homes. We are thinking about Haiti, Santiago de Cuba, the birth place of Adriana, the GIS Analyst in the GIS Team of the City of Miami Beach and of course The Bahamas. We love the Exumas so much and hope to visit these beautiful islands next month; Cat and Long Island, George Town the place so many sailors are spending the winter time. What will these islands look like after this storm and how are the wonderful people we met, doing. We hope that our small Red Cross donation will help a little.
But as usual our own experience makes these events more special. Dorothy and I have great respect for these storms and we always take them very seriously. We are both members of the EOC team of the City of Miami Beach and our EOC Manager always gives very good and detailed reports to management of the city. Based on this, I went Wednesday evening after work to the Marina to double line and prepare the boat the best I could to handle strong wind and strong current that cause the boat to be launched forwards and backward with an incredible speed. We needed some improvements on the canvas and we took it off after a great sail on the bay last Sunday. So we believed we took care of the boat. I visit the marina daily, but with these kinds of storms I go at least twice a day. On Thursday the first boat damage was reported all due to the fact of the typical October high water together with extreme high tides due to full moon and the strong wind that moves the boats so violently backwards that their swim platforms are crushing against the pier.
Island Girl looked great on Friday night but we could not get on board due to the high water and the strong forward and backward movements. Saturday morning we drove through Miami Beach and nearly every street was inundated with at some places 12 inches of water, not caused by rain but due to the extreme high water in the bay in combination with an extreme strong North/Westerly wind. When we entered the marina we could not believe our eyes, all the piers were underwater or just at the waterline. We met one of our neighbors who has been living with his wife on their boat for many years. He told me that this time the boats in the marina had more damage than any boat had during Hurricane Wilma in 2005 with 120 knots wind. And he was right, just the short walk on our pier showed many boats damaged. The largest yacht, Monty docked on the outer slip looked devastated; so much damage. And then I heard Dorothy call me, "Mas, (my nickname) look how Island Girl is damaged". The high water had pushed all the pier fenders out of the water onto the pier and the boat fenders where hanging too high to protect the boats; the wind and the extreme rough water pushed the boats to the piers and the pylons. Island Girl had 'eaten' the 4x4 in front of the concrete pylon half way through but then met the iron bolts and the wood work and the rub rails could not handle this. So over an area of 72 inches she was damaged; luckily not the hull, just the rub rail and the teak. Yesterday I started the repair work and made some good progress today. The pylon is repaired and hopefully next week, with a lot of sanding, Island Girl will be back close to her old status.
We are not leaving until our Condo is rented out and we do not have a lot of progress with this, so both the repair and this will delay our departure date. Hopefully with our next update we will have better news.
Tonight we are meeting our friends Dutch and Renske from Charlotte who are flying to St. Maarten tomorrow to their Sailing Vessel "Aait Vedan" to continue their trip in the Caribbean. We will follow them soon.