Come to sunny Florida

Florida is a boat maintainers dream... a lot of good deals on boats needing some work will be available shortly. This is the view when I paddled out to my boat just over a week ago.

She is still floating tied to the dock!

Gareth

Freyja E35 #241 1972

Possibly the anchors several of us dropped saved that part of the dock, it used to be 200 yds from the wall and oriented the other direction. My neighbours about 100 ft away ended up a lot further away:

Those are some of the best (if that is the right word) photos I have seen yet of the carnage.
It would be interesting to watch the cranes lift boats off of the pile, one by one.
Time for a dumb question: The boats on the land up against the houses..... they were literally blown there? If they floated there wouldn't the buildings be washed away?
As I sit here in sunshine in temps in the 70's, the damage in Florida seems so surreal.
What a tragedy for so many people!



Loren in PDX

Wow - I don't know what to say.

Wow!

Those are the most incredible pictures! And to think that all I'm worried about is some leaky portlights as I sit listening to the rain from Tropical Depression Jeane.

Gareth and all those in "Sunny Florida",

I am so sorry for your losses and damage. The photos are truly an eye opener for those of us living in areas not normally afflicted by such storms. I don't know what else to say.........words just don't seem to be enough.....

Unbelievable...don't know what else to say.

What happens to all the boats that have been damaged beyond repair??

Boats stacked like cord wood

I would guess that the insurance companies will be looking at the boats, assigning values and giving the owners money to fix them or take them if they are "totaled" The question becomes, what does the insurance companies do with them? Where do they sell them? How can someone buy a boat that can be repaired?

Sunny Florida

Does the insurance people carry in FLA cover a boat destroyed in a hurricane??
How could you ever recover from your boat being destroyed like those in the pictures? All the time and energy not to mention money, just lost.

Hurricane insurance in Florida?

I've never insured a boat in Florida so I don't know. I'll ask some buddies there to see if they know. You could also call BOAT/US to see what they say.

Are you interested in finding a boat that's been damaged?

Insurance covers loss from hurricanes. The problem arrises from not understanding what coverage you have. There are two types; actual cash value and agreed value. The first is similar to car insurance. If you have a total loss you receive the average value of a similar boat regardless of the condition of your boat and how much coverage you think you have. The second covers you for the full face value of the policy.

The boats are raised if necessary and then taken to a yard where the damage is assessed and a settelment developed. If there is a total loss the owner is offered a chance to buy the boat back for a nonimal sum. If the owner declines the boats are sold, by sealed bid I believe. Those that are not bought are cut up and junked. The three friends I have who lost their boats have all declined to buy them back. I guess it is easier to make a clean break then to face months of rebuilding.

When I left Journey anchored in the bayou I took the log book and said goodbye. As I set watching the projected track shift to the East and closer to me I was sure she would be lost. As it turned out the ground tackle I described earlier held and Ericson built a strong boat. Strong enough to hold several boats at the same time. We hauled out yesterday and found additional damage which can also be repaired and I talked to Don at Pacific Seacraft and he assured me that they could supply the rub rail, stanchions and bases and stern rail that I need.

Ray Rhode
S/Y Journey

Ray,
I think that the fact that damage to Journey was kind of minimal is due to your experience as a mariner. Atta boy! Hope to see you at the St. Pete Sailboat Show.
Morgan Stinemetz

Morgan,

Thanks for the kind words, but I think it has more to do with caring. I don't have a lot of experience with severe weather anchoring but I had taken the time to do the research and spent the money to be prepared. I would guess that 50-70% of the 90 or so boats anchored in the bayou were using their everyday ground tackle made up of undersized anchors on thin rode with minimal chain. Many set only one hook and that was on short scope. We watched them anchor and prayed that when they broke loose they would miss our boats. I refer to these people as "boat owners" as opposed to "boaters". The "boat owners" goal is to own a boat. They buy a boat and use it several times a year and never take the time to learn the art of boating. The "boaters" goal is boating and that means learning everything he can and doing it right. One example of the "boat owner" was the owner of a steel hulled wreck who showed up the day before Ivan with a 55 gallon drum, several bags of concrete mix and some aircraft cable. He preceeded to mix the concrete in the brum and secure the cable. He then dumped it in the bayou and tied up to this "mooring". Needless to say being round it rolled down the bayou and no one is sure how many boats it got before he washed ashore.

Sorry to get on my soap box but too many of my friends lost their boats to these idiots and I'm still mad.

Ray Rhode
S/Y Journey

P.S. About the St Pete show, is it still on? Not sure how much damage you had down there. We had talked about going and then put it off.

Ray,
Your "soap box" stand is understandable. If you have not already done so, would you please be so kind as to detail what you did in your anchoring that you know was right and what, after having survived the storm, you might do differently? I think there's a lot to be learned.
To the best of my knowledge, the St. Pete Sail Expo is "on." Nothing here got hit hard from Jeanne, though there are some people with no roof, no electricity and no water who might dispute what I say.

Morgan Stinemetz

Good point Morgan, it is worth filing some lessons learned.

To start with I will answer Loren's question: there was a storm surge of about 15 ft inside the Bayou Grande. Pensacola Bay is protected by a barrier island (which took 40ft breakers, and a lot of which is gone), but the water pushed ahead of the storm rose 15 ft in the protected inlets, one of which is the Bayou Grande (another is the Bayou Chico, where the white trash yacht club is). The pictures of boats on dry land are the result of the 15 ft tide, the buildings shown had their entire lower floors washed out. Elsewhere I have seen building that collapsed. The last picture is about 200 yds inland.

I was unable to leave the dock as I was working on my engine at the time. I put two 3/4" nylon twisted lines with chafing protection to each corner the way I had before for tropical storms (visible in the pictures), plus I then dropped both my good anchors using my canoe, a 35lb CQR with 35 ft of 3/8" (I think) chain then 5/8" nylon twisted off the stern, FX23 with all chain off the bow. I tied off the boom and rudder, then took just about everything that was removable from the boat.
I dropped an anchor for one of my neighbours, then we held a ceremony to Njord with champagne and left.
The two anchored boats were at the outside of the pile on the seawall when we returned. The picture below shows the pilings from the floating dock, which leaves me figuring that the dock, once it had risen over the pilings, started to drift, was held briefly by the anchors during which time it flipped around, then the anchor rodes broke and the dock broke apart - the boats directly opposite me, which had been further from the sea wall, ended up smashed to bits inside the boats next to me, but protected us from the concrete. The boats more than 5-6 slips down ended up the far side of the bay in the later pictures.

The boats on moorings or at anchor in the bay were all taken out by the drifting boats from my dock and wound up on shore with them; except for one, which was flying full colours the next day while the rest of us were searching the bay for our boats.

If there is a next time, I will find the best spot I can away from other boats (Ray, a lot of boaters in Pensacola agree with you), drop the two largest anchors I can find with ridiculously oversized rodes to the cleats I installed with a lot of reinforcing glass, and then leave. A lot of boaters like to stay with their boats to fend off others careening towards them, I might be tempted in lower catagory storms, but in something the size of what just hit Pensacola, NO WAY IN HELL. There is not much you can do to save your boat in 130+ mph winds, horizontal rain/spray, and wild waves; one of the blessings of living in the 21st century is that we get plenty of warning of these storms and have plenty of transport to go somewhere else fast. This may seem stating the obvious, but 5 dead bodies were pulled from the water just up the Bayou from where the pictures were taken.

I appreciate the messages from the only people who can understand (other Ericson owners), I will save her if the insurance company let me. Most of the deck hardware is destroyed, along with the deck under it, the boom is gone, a couple of the shrouds are gone, the engine was flooded, but my biggest concern is the crush damage to the main bulkheads from the boats I was sandwiched inbetween. I need a surveyor to look at that. So you may see questions from me in the future on these subjects, plus I will give updates on how it works with the insurance. To complicate things, my employment is about to take me elsewhere, although that may be a blessing since every boat yard in Florida will be packed for a long time to come.

The photo I did not include was the nice looking Ericson 32 owned by a friendly retired chaplain and his wife - we could only find half their boat.

Enough gloom from me, I will sign off.

Gareth

Freyja E35 #241 1972

Gareth,

Several boats from our dock rode out the storm in the ICW between Destin and Panama City. Even though they were protected by high bluffs they had some exciting moments. I love my boat but I have no plans to follow them next time. When they left the projected landfall was near Gulfport. It shifted to the east by close to 100 miles. Had it shifted any further they would have been stuck on board.

Ray Rhode
S/Y Journey

Morgan,

Some of this was in a previous post but here is some of the rationale for what I did.

I did a lot of research before I spent a lot of money and decided to use two anchors in tandem. This technique is discussed in books by Hinz, Calder and Dashew. There isn’t a lot of discussion because I don’t think any of them have used the technique. I decided to use the tandem method instead of the usual dual anchors on two rodes because I reasoned that once the wind shifted with the “V” method you were back to hanging on only one anchor. The big advantage to the “V” method in that you have two independent anchor rodes so there is redundancy. (The lack of this redundancy in the tandem method almost cost me.)

I decided to use a large Fortress (FX-37) and my everyday 35 lb Delta. The big draw back to the Fortress is the possibility of it breaking out, hydroplaning and not resetting. To prevent this I used the Fortress as the first anchor. It was attached to the Delta with 30 feet of 3/8 inch chain. The 3/8 inch chain was used for its weight not necessarily its strength. This was shackled to the head of the Delta. At first I intended to attach the chain to the Delta’s crown but after some more thought I decided to use the head. With the first chain attached to the crown the Delta became another chain link and if the boat veered the tension would tend to roll the Delta out of the bottom rather letting it pivot. With the first chain attached to the head, the Delta could pivot and the tension would still be divided between the two anchors. If the Delta broke out, the Fortress would provide sufficient holding until the Delta could reset. Also if both anchors broke out the Delta would act as a kellet to help keep the Fortress from hydroplaning and give both anchors time to reset. As with all multiple anchor systems there is always the danger of one anchor tangling with the other but I think this problem is minimized with the tandem approach. It is thought that several boats that used the “V” technique got tangled up with themselves.

The Delta was attached to 40 feet of 3/8 inch chain which was shackled to 220 feet of 7/8 inch 3-strand nylon rode. The rode was connected to two 7/8 inch bridle lines which were secured to the two bow cleats. To connect the rode and two bridles I used ½ inch chain looped through the thimbles. The bridles fell five feet below the waterline. This weight was meant to keep the rode from wrapping around the keel/rudder. The bridle lines were run aft to the primary winches and then cleated. This gave me a total of 300 feet of rode. The water depth was 13 to 15 feet and I allowed for a total of 15 feet of surge/wave action giving a total scope of about 10 to 1.

All of this worked as I had hoped and even though Journey held a C&C 34 and other boats at one time or another, my anchor marker was right where I left it. The only change I plan to make for next time is to add a third line from the ½ inch chain loop where the bridles join the rode. I plan to use 3/8 inch chain over the bow roller, changing to 7/8 inch rode secured around the mast. One of the bridle lines was completely cut and the other was down to one strand. Had the last strand failed Journey would have ended up on the beach like so many others. This third bridle will be set slack and will only come into play if the two rope bridles are cut. I would use chain for the bridles but I don’t have a good way to secure them to the cleats.

Should anyone want to try this technique I would suggest practicing it before using it for real. Deploying all of this ground tackle can get pretty confusing. I started with the bridle lines and then laid everything out on deck in reverse order of deployment before leaving the dock.

Hope this wasn’t too rambling and would appreciate any comments/suggestions.

Ray Rhode
S/Y Journey

Note for Morgan: The boat with the concrete filled drum for a mooring looks remarkably like RIGHT GUARD. Even sounds like something Bubba might do. Are you sure he didn’t move?

Ray - brilliant. Having read a lot of Calder and Deshew I also like the sound of the tandem system. Since the points of greatest stress are at the attachment points, I think your system provides redundancy where it is needed most very effectively, and if I am in hurricane country again I will keep it in my box of tricks.

Something I did not mention earlier is that I never felt pressured for time, thanks to the reporting services. Initially the storm would be heading east of us, then west, then at the last minute made a dead hit; but despite all that, it was clear by 48 hours before the eye hit that it was time to get ready. The conditions did get not unpleasant until 12 hours before, when the wind kicked up and up, and then the tornadoes struck about 8-10 hours out. That left a day to safely make preparations then leave.

I am not familiar with the ICW in your area, in Pensacola it has a very large fetch, which is why most of the boats headed for the bayous. There is some wreckage of those who tried it there.

Gareth

Freyja E35 #241 1972

Gareth,

You are correct about the pressure. We started moving boats out of the dock on Monday morning. The problem with getting such an early start is not being certain of the direction of the maximum winds. I guessed correctly and set up for the Southeast. The wind started from the East and shifted to the South and finally the Southwest. The problem with waiting is that there is only so much good holding ground and swinging room and if you wait too long you kind of get left out. Some boats had just stayed out from Frances.

The ditch just east of the bay is know as the Grand Canyon by the tow boats. There are 30 to 40 foot bluffs and you are protected from the North and South. The the winds started from the east things got a little rough. Many of the charter boats from Destin hide there so they had a lot of company. One of the tow boats even invited one of the guys for dinner monday night.

Ray Rhode
S/Y Journey

This is the story of the four people from the marina that I know of who decided to stay on their boats through the storm:

One took his boat just outside the bayou into the bay to anchor. He was taken out by another boat with winds well over 100 mph, but managed to drop a second anchor as he was heading for the beach, and winch himself back through the waves and save his boat. The boat that took him out was washed high and dry with major hull damage.

One stayed inside the bayou, but was unable to save his boat. He climbed out of the wreckage after the storm, and was picked up by the police, who took him to safety.

Another, who stayed in the marina, was found floating face down up the bayou the next day.

The fourth is still classified as missing.

G