Hey guys,
We made it through. Curt saw my update on our FB page. We were watching this one for a while. We use Mike's Weather Page to monitor the tropics this time of year. I am also a big fan of the EURO models. It's been the most accurate for the last few years. EURO showed the war goddess as a monster and coming right at us for over a week before it hit. We prepped the boat, provisioned up and look at our options on where to run. The options were Culebra to the mangroves in Ensenada Honda, Vieques for more mangroves, Salinas for, you guessed it, mangroves, Nanny Cay in BVI, the hurricane holes in STJ or BVI, St. Croix or Palmas del Mar to a yacht club with a massive breakwater. We ended up picking the yacht club in Palmas del Mar. It's tucked into the mountains with good coverage from every direction but the east. With the storm forecasted to hit the north side of PR, this area should see winds clocking north, west to south. That would put 3,000 foot high mountains between us and the worse winds.
So we set sail from STT and arrived Sunday with the storm expected to hit Wednesday afternoon. We faced our bow southwest, towards the forecasted heaviest winds. Stripped almost everything, lashed the mainsail and spiderwebbed Smitty into the slip using the 12 foot high piers for multiple lines to various attachment points. We had over 20 lines out covering all directions of expected wind.
We did get a hotel and spent the bulk of the storm in the room. Although I did walk down to the boat several times to check on the boat (the hotel was bout a half mile away).
Smitty and crew are fine. We didn't get a scratch. We did only see about 50 kts of wind at the strongest gusts.
This now makes 6 hurricanes, 4 nor'easters and two blizzards we have gone through with Smitty. The worst winds we have seen during any was 75 knot gusts during a suprise nor'easter in October of 2014. I think picking the location to ride out the storm is the most important part of the prep.
Here are some post storm pics of the hurricane hole in BVI (almost the entire moorings and Sunsails fleets appear to be gone), Nanny Cay on Tortola (no word if any boats survived), our favorite sushi restaurant (we had drinks and dinner here Friday night to discuss options with other boaters, our home mooring is literally 300 yards from this place) and some pics of Smitty prepped.
We are hopeful heading back to STT next week. On top of everything it appears I have bad fuel (growth) and we're going through filters every 2 hours while making our way here. So I have to get some supplies and build a fuel polishing system. My bride's job is mostly based on rental properties in Jost Van Dyke and early reports are that the entire island was wiped out. My work boat for this coming season is a 56 foot catamaran that was secured in some mangroves, I don't know how she is and the reports coming out of that area are not good.
I will report back some more once we get back to STT.
Thanks to those that kept us in your thoughts.