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Old 03-10-2024, 09:54   #1
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Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

I'm still wondering, where is the best place for a boat to go in a hurricane? Go to sea and avoid it? Stay in the marina? If you are in a marina, you'll likely be smashed against other boats or buildings. If out at sea, you could capsize.

This video from Florida looks like boats in marinas took a beating while boats on mooring balls look fine. Maybe that's the ideal place to be.


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Old 03-10-2024, 10:26   #2
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

Only one way to describe that, heart breaking
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Old 03-10-2024, 11:07   #3
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

https://www.practical-sailor.com/blo...hurricane-hole
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Old 03-10-2024, 11:30   #4
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

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Originally Posted by Rohan View Post
I'm still wondering, where is the best place for a boat to go in a hurricane? Go to sea and avoid it? Stay in the marina? If you are in a marina, you'll likely be smashed against other boats or buildings. If out at sea, you could capsize.
An unanswerable question and one that those of us in cyclone prone areas have to make every season.

I've been in marinas several times with a cyclone forecast as people prepared their boats. Constantly surprised (horrified) by what some owner's idea is of a decent line. Many, many examples of rubbish ropes, rusty chains and cheap shackles.

Just a single boat comes away from its mooring, and causes total havoc. And of course there also flying debris; sheets of roofing, tree branches, blocks of wood etc.

In a marina you also have to reply on the marina itself maintaining good maintenance and inspection standards. Again I know of some that definitely don't.

And then there's always the risk of a flash flood/surge that lifts. I saw one of these surges that caused an entire dock to float/lift over all the poles. Dock with boats attached all just floated off. Needless to say that floating dock caused enormous damage.

Similar problem happened in just a bad storm to a floating fish farm close to where I live, It was huge and floated off 5 or 6 miles. Although amazingly it caused no actual damage.
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Old 03-10-2024, 13:47   #5
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

That's not Gulfport Marina. Those are the day docks that the city has in Boca Ciega Bay, where powerboaters would tie up when they were having lunch in town and dinghies would be left when liveaboards were ashore.



All of those wrecked boats are the liveaboards that were anchored out, often poorly with cheap tackle, in the free anchorage in the bay. People generally lived on them because they couldn't afford rent on land.


The last two storms this year have sunk or beached more than 30 of those boats. The free anchorage around the day docks used to be full; Not so much today when I drove past the bay.


Generally, cruisers will grab the mooring balls for $20-30 a day because they are secure in storms and away from the poorly anchored vessels. Permanent liveaboards can't use the mooring balls because there are time limits.



The boats in the actual marina are fine, I'm told, except for the occasional mayhem that comes from people not preparing properly, tying things down and removing sails, biminis, etc.


So the answer is, yes, marinas are much safer in Florida storms. At St. Petersburg City Marina, where I keep my sailboat, damage appears to be limited to a few sails and biminis.


The video is just another illustration of why it's a bad idea to allow rundown boats to anchor in open bays in a hurricane zone. No one died this storm. In the last one, someone did.
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Old 03-10-2024, 16:48   #6
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

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Originally Posted by Rohan View Post
I'm still wondering, where is the best place for a boat to go in a hurricane? Go to sea and avoid it? Stay in the marina? If you are in a marina, you'll likely be smashed against other boats or buildings. If out at sea, you could capsize.

This video from Florida looks like boats in marinas took a beating while boats on mooring balls look fine. Maybe that's the ideal place to be.


Never go to sea to avoid a hurricane because the forecasts aren't good enough at the time you would need to leave.

As we have seen since 2004 with Ivan, some of these storms are 400 wiles wide.

We had about 8 hurricanes while I was in Pensacola, FL.

For the normal Cat 1's and 2's, we'd have our usual Hurricane Party and watch the anchored boats in the Hurricane Hole in front of my apartment.

One or two would always drag anchor and lose their mast and go under the bridge to leeward.

During Cat 3/4 Hurricane Ivan, all but one of the 30-40 anchored boats ended up on land or against the bridge. Surge was 12'-18' depending.

The floating Marina at the Navy Base pictured below was lifted over it's pilings then was blown into the anchored boats in the Hurricane Hole. The floating dock took those boats out like a gigantic bowling ball.

Surge came through at about 3 am. Folks were swimming around in the lower floor apartments. The landlady was having a battle with a floating refrigerator.

A friend of mine that didn't have insurance had his Tayana 37 hauled before the storm. Winds blew that boat off it's stands and destroyed it.

The apartment where we had our Hurricane Parties in the past got 8' of water in it's lower floor apartments. It took 2 years to rebuild it.

Rebuilt apartment in photo below. Others are from Ivan.

Ivan took a similar track like Helene near Cuba, but Ivan was slow moving heading a bit more to the West and beat us up for 10 hours in Pensacola. No power for a week and a half.
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Old 03-10-2024, 16:55   #7
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

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I'm still wondering, where is the best place for a boat to go in a hurricane? Go to sea and avoid it? Stay in the marina?
The best place for a boat and the best place for the owner of that boat are not the same when in a hurricane. Put it in a marina and gtfo.
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Old 03-10-2024, 17:26   #8
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

Shanachie is correct.

there is no marina in that video. What you are seeing is the beachfront in Gulfport. The dock that is destroyed is the dinghy dock. All the boats? Those are washed up on the regular beach and the main strip by the Casino.

The Gulfport Marina is located basically inside a hurricane hole. It is not in this video. I’m assuming it’s probably not damaged.

all of these boats are people from the Anchorage. Many of them are not anchored well. Many of them should also have left for a storm like this. That entire area is no place to be during a hurricane. It is not at all protected and the fetch is ridiculous for an event like that.

I wish the municipality a quick and easy clean up with some bucket loaders and an excavator. Hopefully they can just crush these up where they are and put them in the dump.

A lot of people will have lost their homes in this case. I feel bad for them. However, they also should have taken some responsibility for themselves and got out of there. That is not a place to ride out any sort of storm

Side note: moorings are not safe in a hurricane. I sustained all of my hurricane damage when the entire mooring field dragged over across the harbor and into the seawall where the travel lift is. All the boats smashed together and several sunk. I got a lot of cosmetic damage crashing into everyone else during the storm. this was several years ago
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Old 03-10-2024, 17:29   #9
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rohan View Post
I'm still wondering, where is the best place for a boat to go in a hurricane? Go to sea and avoid it? Stay in the marina? If you are in a marina, you'll likely be smashed against other boats or buildings. If out at sea, you could capsize.

This video from Florida looks like boats in marinas took a beating while boats on mooring balls look fine. Maybe that's the ideal place to be.

best place to go in a hurricane? It sounds like you already live there. It says Chesapeake and Potomac on your profile. That’s the way to stay safe. Potomac. All the way as far as you can go. The trick to surviving hurricanes is to get inland as far as possible. to reduce fetch as much as possible. To be more afraid of trees falling on your boat than anything else. That’s how I have been through several of them after the one that I was damaged in
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Old 03-10-2024, 18:52   #10
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

Hurricanes don't just happen. There are days and some times weeks with path predictions. It's best just to leave the area long before the storm approaches. I've been in hurricanes and typhoons in a ship. You don't want to try it in a boat. I'm sure there are dozens of books and articles by people claiming to have ridden out in a boat. It's not like the stories, not an adventure, but a good chance to die.
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Old 03-10-2024, 22:29   #11
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

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Originally Posted by Rohan View Post
I'm still wondering, where is the best place for a boat to go in a hurricane?
Quote:
Originally Posted by grantmc View Post
An unanswerable question and one that those of us in cyclone prone areas have to make every season.
Not only is this NOT unanswerable, but it's an easy one - as Lepke said, you go to sea. You don't need to avoid all effects of the storm, just the worst of it (and as much as you can). 48 hr should be plenty to get you "there" - even at only 5 kt, that's 240 nm away. Even 36 hr or fewer are probably enough. That will get you out of the hurricane force winds and probably storm force (F10) as well; maybe not tropical force, but your boat should be able handle those no problem.

Consider this, at sea whatever happens is generally up to you (and mother nature). Anywhere else, no matter how well you prepare, you are also relying on the preparation (or just bad luck) of others. As described above, any manner of issues are out of your control - other boats breaking free, flying debris, docks coming loose, storm surge...

No, it's not always possible for everyone to take their boat out to sea for whatever reason, but that wasn't the question. The question was "where is the best place." The answer is at sea. It's really, as they say, a no brainer.

Here's a question (which I don't know the answer): how many boats were lost at sea from Hurricane Helene versus how many that were lost in other methods? I expext the former is somewhere between 0 and a handful whereas the latter is definately in the hundreds and possible the thousands.
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Old 04-10-2024, 00:35   #12
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

Only Ships go out to sea to avoid a hurricane, not privately owned small sailboats under say 120’ or so.
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Old 04-10-2024, 00:45   #13
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

Hurricane Helene covered most of the Eastern Gulf, it would be suicide to sail out to sea into that Cat 4 hurricane on a small sailboat.
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Old 04-10-2024, 07:02   #14
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

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Only Ships go out to sea to avoid a hurricane, not privately owned small sailboats under say 120’ or so.
You have a bizarre definition of "small sailboat." I would think that's somewhere in the lower double-digit range. If you have a 100' boat (or 80' or 60') and leave it in the path of a hurricane, well...maybe you just have more money than brains. But that doesn't determine which is "best" for the boat.


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Hurricane Helene covered most of the Eastern Gulf, it would be suicide to sail out to sea into that Cat 4 hurricane on a small sailboat.
You're not going out INTO the storm (I agree that would be stupid); you're going out BEFORE the storm in order to avoid it (or at least the worst of it).

You can find hurricane forecasts here: National Hurricane Center.
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Old 04-10-2024, 07:05   #15
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Re: Damage to boats, marina in downtown Gulfport Florida after Hurricane

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best place to go in a hurricane? It sounds like you already live there. It says Chesapeake and Potomac on your profile.
That is true but I plan to move to Florida in the next couple years!
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