Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

[gonesail]

before you try to out maneuver a Hurricane in the open water .. read "At the Mercy of the Sea" by Kretschmer.

[Leadfree]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Just seeking information. I don't know of any suitable 'hurricane hole' creeks, in SE Florida, that would be worth a 200 mi trip, in 'bad' weather.

There are actually quite a few, IYKYK...

On another note:
What happens when you're 200 miles out from Tampa and you have a halyard or other failure that will slow your boat down? The idea of running sounds great, and when it works, fine. The problem is that unlike a normal passage in which the ramification of slowing down is that you're a bit later than your schedule... slowing down in the path of a hurricane means that a band can catch you and then you're in real sh!t. That is exactly what happened to two of my three examples above.

[Rohan]

Originally Posted by Leadfree

What happens when you're 200 miles out from Tampa and you have a halyard or other failure that will slow your boat down?

Then you use your engines, or even a spinnaker (the wind would be behind you after all). Obviously everyone's specific decision would come down to the condition of the boat, whether family is somewhere safe, etc. But personally, I would MUCH rather be anchored on the east side of Florida where at worst I would be blown out to sea, than on the west side against a lee shore.

[Shanachie]

As people face the loss of their lives, homes, boats and jobs, some of you need to consider how big of a**holes you are for offering uninformed and self-aggrandizing opinions about how YOU would not suffer losses because you are so smart and competent.


It's easy to think yourself brilliant when you are playing a game instead of facing reality.


The view from ground zero is very different.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Rohan

... But personally, I would MUCH rather be anchored on the east side of Florida where at worst I would be blown out to sea, than on the west side against a lee shore.

Then, you'll want to make certain you are to the South, of Milton, in the stronger sector of the storm.

Hurricanes are circular, spiraling around it’s eye, in a counterclockwise direction, in the Northern Hemisphere, and in a clockwise direction, in the Southern Hemisphere.
Accordingly, the wind direction one experiences will depend upon your location, relative to the hurricane eye.
In this case, if you are located on Florida’s East coast, North of the eye, the gradient winds will be ON-shore.

Only South of the eye, in the fiercer quadrant, will the winds be off-shore.

[scherzoja]

The predicament the millions of people in the Tampa/Ft. Meyers are in is distressing. Some of us are no where near there, some of us are not even in a hurricane zone (like being too far north), some of us are in hurricane areas that have been hit hard, but today is not our turn. Near Pensacola, I deal with this ever summer and, aside from Ivan, I've been lucky with only a few Cat 1 or 2 indirect strikes.

Preparation worked, both for the house and the boat. Sally was a hard reality check because of its seemingly capricious course (forgive my minor personification of that storm) that changed my level of risk tolerance. It caught us a little surprised, but not completely unprepared (house was already boarded up, boat was already prepped to leave). When it change course the day before landfall, I moved the boat to a safe spot that night and it survived unscathed. The house was different, 12" water throughout, neighborhood trashed. Eye went over us and most damage was water because oaks provided wind break.

Since that moment, I decided that if I am within or near the 3 day cone and the forecast appears stable low likelihood of large deviation from the cone boundaries (like Helen and like Milton), I will either leave the cone or tuck in to one of several spots that I have selected, depending on situation. The decisions are storm-specific, but past lessons can often be applied to current situations. Strong hurricanes that make landfall on the US happen only a few times per year, sometimes no times per year; consequently, we have relatively few opportunities to simulate decisions with real-time data/events.

Perhaps we should have opened a new thread named "Non-Emotional Discussion of Strategies for Milton". It stifles learning and suppresses open discussion about what worked and what didn't if we can't set aside the emotional aspect of severe crises, as difficult as that is to do, and logically discuss the outcomes. A major reason that many CF'ers and I read and sometimes post to CF is to learn. It's a shame that we can't discuss what one might do in this situation to learn from others' experience and decisions (both past and hypothetical), while using live data as a reality check on those decisions in a semi-hypothetical scenario without emotional interjections or character assassination.

[Rohan]

Originally Posted by GordMay

Then, you'll want to make certain you are to the South, of Milton, in the stronger sector of the storm.

Hurricanes are circular, spiraling around it’s eye, in a counterclockwise direction, in the Northern Hemisphere, and in a clockwise direction, in the Southern Hemisphere.

Overall the storm is still moving in a NE direction, and it should lose some force after it passes over the Florida peninsula, so I would still rather be on the east coast than on the west, but yes you bring up a very good point I hadn't considered, the spiral effect.

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by Shanachie

As people face the loss of their lives, homes, boats and jobs, some of you need to consider how big of a**holes you are for offering uninformed and self-aggrandizing opinions about how YOU would not suffer losses because you are so smart and competent.


It's easy to think yourself brilliant when you are playing a game instead of facing reality.


The view from ground zero is very different.

I don’t know. I’ve had some pretty big hurricane losses and I can still play the game. I’m still fixing some of my hurricane losses.


i’ve been through 4 category 3 or higher hurricanes where the eye passed over my boat.

I have really agreed with all of your posts lately. You’ve been posting really good stuff.
But I think playing the little boat defense game is a good exercise. I know I learned something. I learned that I should’ve went to Pensacola instead of staying put in the Tampa Bay area. My first instinct was not the right one. That’s a valuable lesson i’ll take with me forever

[BlueH2Obound]

Chotu, any word on your boat?

[Chotu]

Originally Posted by BlueH2Obound

Chotu, any word on your boat?

I will let others be the judge of that, but I’m pretty sure I did fine. If Lieutenant Dan made it right at the head of Tampa Bay, I’m sure my boat is sitting just fine way up that river

[AA3JY]

Originally Posted by Chotu

I will let others be the judge of that, but I’m pretty sure I did fine. If Lieutenant Dan made it right at the head of Tampa Bay, I’m sure my boat is sitting just fine way up that river

https://www.yahoo.com/news/florida-r...142859180.html

[Johan Leopard51]

it is fascinating to watch the debates about tactics from our perspective of boater in region with no hurricanes. (Seychelles)

12 foot surge would for us mean almost no fixed or floating dock is sensible. For us it is a 2h trip to the offshore wind side of a massive granite island. I’d be that side on motor if I absolutely had to be onboard.

End of the day : I can replace my boat, not my family. I’d have done my best to secure PS on anchor on the other side of island from storm, and been high and dry on the island.

Best wishes to all for losses sufffered.

[Shanachie]

For those of you who enjoy playing what-if about what you would do if you lived in a hurricane zone, here's a scorecard:


If you have no family, no commitments and no job, yes, you can take off for eight or 10 days at a time to try to outrun a hurricane the two or three times a year that one usually threatens the Gulf of Mexico.


Even so, you are taking these trips at a time of year when the average feels-like temperature is 105 and the wind is light or calm, unless a violent thunderstorm suddenly erupts and batters you with 50-knot winds.


And, one day, you will guess wrong. Hurricanes have strayed a hundred or several hundred miles off their predicted track.


If you would have run to the Okeechobee Waterway and the east coast -- you need a mast smaller than 47 feet to do that -- you would have lost. Milton blanketed a large section of the state and battered the area near Port St. Lucie.


In my experience, there are no sheltered creeks on the east coast around Port St. Lucie worth traveling 250 miles to hide in.


If you had traveled to Boot Key Harbor in the Keys, a trip of at least three days, you still would have been hit with tropical storm winds.


Most people who own sailboats don't have that option. They have families to care for and protect, homes to save, jobs to fulfill. My waterfront townhouse is worth 15 or 20 times my sailboat. Is that even a choice?



Hiding in the Hillsborough River turned out to be a good idea because Milton unexpectedly jogged south. On its predicted path, a 15-foot wall of water would have engulfed Tampa and swept away every boat on the river.


Big storm surges are tsunamis, not rising tides. Read about what Helene did to the west coast of Florida.



In my case, I decided to stay in my St. Petersburg marina, as close to a hurricane hole as you get on the west coast. With northeast to north winds because Milton unexpectedly turned south, that was a great decision because we were protected by the peninsula that is the St. Petersburg Pier.


Still, most or all of the water drained out of the bay because of the easterly winds. My boat and its neighbor, totaling about 30,000 pounds, were tied to an aging piling that snapped when our 14-foot-deep slip dried out.


That propelled the boats forward and under the concrete dock. When the water came back in, the bow rollers were trapped. Luckily, some liveaboards returned to the marina early and saw what was happening.


They got together, jumped on the forward decks and freed the boats before serious damage happened. (They get a case of expensive beer for that for their next dock party ...)



There are other, larger boats still trapped under the docks as I write. The liveaboards are trying to organize larger crowds at low tide to free them.


My point is that sh-t happens in hurricanes. You make decisions, and you are lucky or unlucky. As long as you are diligent -- removing sails and biminis, enough lines and anchors, etc. -- your self-proclaimed sailing genius is not going to save you.


Also, people who endure hurricanes regularly do not appreciate people from more docile regions who believe they know better because they once visited Florida.

[GordMay]

"Milton" storm surge leaves boats scattered across Punta Gorda Marina
➥ https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/milton-storm-surge-leaves-boats-scattered-across-marina-221423173768

[Chotu]

I lived in Florida for 15 years and went through four hurricanes (category three or higher) with an eye that passed right over my boat.

the first time I ever played the game. I really lost because I wasn’t playing. I was in Los Angels sitting at a restaurant and saw a hurricane on the TV at the bar. Oh! So I rushed to find out what was going on and then rushed to get a plane ticket to go save my boat. well, they were all canceled. You could not fly there. So I started driving. Route 10. Goes from LA to Jacksonville. By the time I got there it was definitely all over. The mooring field had dragged. The entire mooring field. And my boat smashed in the corner , where the travel lift is with all of the rest of the boats. I think everyone knows how long it took me to build this boat and exactly what went into it. All of that smashed into the corner within a year of this boat being launched. Several boats sank. chunks of my boat were taken out at the bow and sterns. the dagger boards were eaten up by people’s dinghy davits. up and down both sides of the boat is a lot of cosmetic damage.

I think I’ve earned the right to play the game.

I left that state precisely because of the 105 degree heat and the fact that i don’t enjoy playing the game in real life at all. Florida is an incredibly stressful, hot, wet, lousy place to live. I’m sorry. But I really don’t like i. Living there is so stressful and so hot that it puts you into a bad mood and in my case, makes me stupid. My brain slows down from the heat . I’m so much happier now that I left it. great place to visit occasionally, but it’s not to my liking environmentally.

i’m not sure why you are taking offense to people practicing their hurricane response ideas. everyone learned valuable lessons here. Because we had a real hurricane to practice with. typically, this thread would just go on and on with people thinking their hurricane preparation idea is the best one and they would never be agreement or consensus about what worked or what didn’t work in a real hurricane. So, the thread is kind of useless. In this case it’s not. The thread was so useful. It’s almost a first for a forum. We learned that it’s OK to run. The imaginary boats that went to Pensacola had days of good weather. They didn’t experience the hurricane at all. And they were only going 5 kn.

my boat also did fine and would have done fine on a 15 foot storm surge as long as debris did not dislodge it. That’s where my mistake was. Typically I would have gone into a different type of watershed than the one I chose off of Tampa Bay. And I have. I have used the St. John’s River and went into a creek off of that, and I have used the Caloosahatchee and went most of the way to Okeechobee. Those are indeed hurricane proof. You get the wind, but that’s it. Nothing else. but where it was located there was not a 15 foot surge and they’re never could have been. It was so far inland that it’s really hard to predict exactly, but it may not have seen any storm surge at all where it was located. It was in a town call Ivy Estates. Ivy Estates is as far inland as Brandon. Pretty sure they didn’t get storm surge in Brandon. so it doesn’t matter if it was 15 feet feet or not because it doesn’t go that far inland, which is precisely why i choose places like that to cram my boat.

Did the exact same thing in the St John’s for some other hurricane too. Worked great.

As long as you’re not in a marina you can go through a major hurricane without damage in my experience.

and yes. I’m a single guy. My family is in real estate, so after a lifetime of sitting around the dinner table, listening to lawyers, escrow, closings, I have no real estate . Boat is my everything. I don’t have other distractions and real estate would be like an anchor tied around my neck as a traveler.

we all have different situations. But I don’t think you should expect a former Florida resident to not play the hurricane game. Even people looking to move to Florida in the future. And besides, me, with 15 years living in Florida, and the other guy that went to Pensacola lives in Southeast Florida. It says right on his profile. so it’s not like it’s not people playing the game aren’t or weren’t florida people. the OP was also trying to formulate hurricane strategies because he’s moving to florida. A valuable exercise. this wasn’t three people from the UK trying to play a game. These are people who are affected by or who have been affected by hurricanes trying to hone their skills.