The Listing Photo

The Listing Photo

Thursday, September 23, 2010

My First Hurricane?

Well, after sailing through 2 Tropical Storms, it looks like I might see my first hurricane. The rains and winds have picked up since last night. Invest 95 (a designation of NOAA or the NWS for watched, numbered low-pressure systems) was upgraded and named Tropical Storm Mathew today. The tracking map above, from Weather Underground, an online weather site I use, is estimating now that Mathew will upgrade to a Cat 1 hurricane sometime Saturday night or Sunday morning just a 100 miles or so ENE of my location. The last green dot before turning to yellow, on the map above, is about where Roatan is located.
Today I saw that a few, or perhaps all of the boats on the front side of the marina have moved and tied up to trees on the very back side between Fantasy Island and Roatan Island proper. The front side is much less sheltered and it is a wise thing to do, but I am not sure what to do here, other than doubling up lines, perhaps to trees instead of the dock. The local weather forecast never shows really high winds - between 30 and 35 knots. I have been on anchor in worse winds than that.
(As an aside - I looked up the history of Hurricane Ida today, online, because I never really understood what exactly struck me last November. The internet shows the track onto the US coast but stops as, I think, it quickly degraded. But the weather system that continued north east looked like a huge thunderstorm, covering many states, and killing 4 in the US as it passed back offshore into the Atlantic. I heard from friends in Norfolk that the surge put the water almost to the top of the floating dock pilings, where I stayed prior to departure. But I have always imagined that Ida remained an organized storm and strengthen again after moving back offshore. From the historical weather maps, it just appeared as a huge rain storm. Now I know.)
So, for now, I will remove all I can from the deck and see what tomorrow looks like.

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