2008: Trying to reason with Hurricane season

2008 was also a busy with 2 named storms that decided to visit us.

Jimmy Klinke (my friend from AVHQ) had decided to come down for a visit and some fishing....he landed the day we were preparing for the first Hurricane named "Faye". His week of relaxation became two days of boat preparation and three of "riding the storm out"!!

Craig and Jimmy take down everything and lash it down in preparation at the slip for Hurricane Faye.

Driving to the mooring field where Craig, Angela and Jimmy would ride out Hurricane Faye on board the boat. Second picture is the boat tied up at the mooring ball with 4 lines attached. We had to check these during the storm for chafe.

This is the "calm before the storm" sitting on the boat and Jimmy waiting for his first hurricane. The night before the storm we took time and did do a little fishing. Caught a few small ones but at least got a little fishing in.

Hurricane Faye packed lots of rain and winds in the 50 knot range as we saw in the Harbour while riding out the storm. We were stuck for three days on the mooring ball mostly watching movies and sleeping but the storm passed without any damage to the boat or the three fearless crew members. Jimmy is now a true sailor riding out his first hurricane aboard a sailboat!

The second storm that decided to visit the Keys came only one week later and was named "Ike". In watching Ike move through the islands it looked as if it was going to hit Marathon head on as a Cat 4 hurricane. Luckily it made some big moves and passed to the west of Key West sparing Marathon and most of the Keys of lots of damage.

Angela had to fly out for work so I was left to ride out the storm on my own. Instead of moving the boat to a mooring ball where I could get stuck and have no escape if the storm got bad, we moved the boat to a large slip at the end of our dock and setup 25 lines from every angle to deal with the winds and storm surge.

Angela prepares for Ike and helps tied the boat to every extra piling we could find before she heads off to California.

This was the boat the day before Ike. I tied the boat in the middle of the big slip and had one line attached to a winch so I could winch myself back to the one side if I needed to make an escape.

Ike ended up being "less of a storm" than Faye but still packed lots of rain and I recorded gusts at the slip up to 45 knots. It was a long three days again aboard the boat, this time alone, but we were all glad to make it through yet another storm. Hopefully next year we will be riding out the hurricane season below the hurricane belt.