Saturday, August 27, 2016

Hurricane David 1979

The eye of this storm passed directly overhead.

Yesterday, while working at Flint Creek Outfitters Dade City, I met a fella who works for Yachting Magazine.  I put on my sales face and we discussed Orvis fly rods and gear, backpacks, apparel and Cannondale bikes.  We went over the many bike trails of Florida. Then the conversations turned to hurricanes and yachts which sparked this story.  


In 1979, I  was living aboard a late model 46’ Bertram Sportfisherman at Bahia Mar Marina in Ft. Lauderdale.  Hurricane David was forecasted to bust the east coast wide open, thus the DockMaster ordered everyone and their boats out.


At the last minute, I hired a first mate.  He was 17. I was 24.  I have experienced a few hurricanes before,  but this would be the first I would get caught in.  Not knowing about the New River or anywhere else around Bahia Mar except the ICW, I decided to run to Lake Okeechobee to ride David out.  


Heck, the Dockmaster run us out just before he was sure David was going to hit.  I did not even think about that St. Lucie Inlet was 93 miles north.  No outrunning it, I thought.  By the time, I arrived to the first lock to Lake Okeechobee, it was closed.  Oh boy.


So they say, here comes a Category 4 and I am stuck near the ICW in Coffee Pot Basin.  When I studied for my Captains license there was no schools to make it easy to pass the test.  So, three of us studied together in the home of Russell Atkins, J.P. Garner and myself.  From the 2” thick Chapman’s of Seamanship book, I put what I learned to work.


The illustration in the book showed an anchor pattern and a picture of a boat with 2 anchor lines out at 45 degree off the stem of the boat.  So, my mate and I let out almost all of the chain on one anchor and ¾” rope on the other.  Maybe 50 yards MOL. The entire scope of the lines were clover leafed and shackled inside the hatch.

The boat(yacht in my case) had a big tool box and in it was a roll of duct tape.  I wrapped the outriggers to the cleats 5 or 6 wraps.  That should hold them.  Then I found a 50’ section of ½ inch rope for the Zodiac Raft(boat).  I secured the rope to the wood chocks under the raft.


We are ready now and here comes David.  The big boat had 3 steering stations.  Top to bottom, one helm on the tuna tower.  One can see fish afar from this position(not today).  The tower is about 35 feet above waterline.  Then another helm on the bridge, where most of the time are used by the captains. They operate it from the bridge and catch plenty of marlin, sails, wahoo and dolphin.(not today)  Lastly, I would be on inside the salon.  The helm had complete protection from the windows against the winds and pelting rain.(I hoped)  There were windshield wipers that were not needed, again I thought.   And all the gauges except a GPS neatly by the steering wheel.  There was a nifty knot meter that would register 100 knots.  Kinda like an old Ford Mustang that registered 160. Why is this gauge on here, I wondered.


The rain began to pelt with vigor. The rain caused a complete whiteout.  The  anchors felt as though they were holding. The Detroit 892’s were faintly purring in neutral.   Instrumental panel was lit in red for prevention of night blindness.  I was thinking, hope I’m on my way back to Ft. Liquordale before nightfall.  It was daylight now and there were a few hours left.  I didn’t look at the gauges very much, because I was ready to duck a coconut.  


We were holding at 50 knots.  60 knots still good.  70 knots and my duct tape became  unraveled on both outriggers almost simultaneously.  They were shaking like they were alive with buck fever. Surprisingly the outriggers did not break or anything else at that time.


80 knots and my rope knots stayed tied to the raft and wooden chocks.  What I did not expect was that the chocks pulled out from the lag bolts fastening them to the deck.  This added to increase our adrenaline as the rope wrapped around the bow and side rails next to the salon windows where we were.  The raft was flinging to and fro.  I wasn’t too worried about the raft as it was made from rubber. But the chocks were of wood.  That concerned me.  With the raft and wood chalks swinging violently, they broke loose.  It look as though the raft would not hit ground until Mexico.  It was gone for good.


Now the wind gauge is gusting up to far as it would register - 100 knots. It was not sustained but still consistently 80 knots or better.  We were too young to be scared and this was exciting stuff.  Until, here comes a 50-foot sailboat dead on to collide amidship with us and it was less than 300 feet away.


I told my mate, Scotty, “we are going to break anchor”.  All I can do is hope our boat comes loose from the anchor in time.  I reversed the engines and the sailboat missed us and our anchor lines.  I yelled at Scottie to pull in the anchor.  He was getting blasted by the wind and rain  I saw a few coconuts that looked like a line drive from Ted Williams and was hoping none would hit Scotty  He would have been injured or dead.  And I would be up on shore and in the trees.


Finally, he got the rope anchor up.  I had a windless for the chain anchor of course.   Scotty came back inside shaking the water off like a wet dog.  He was the real hero in this crazy attempt to save a 300K boat(1M-today).


The shoreline appeared 50 yards away and closing.  Fortunately, we whizzed by a channel marker.  I dead-racked the 892’s and was able to stay by the Marker using ¾ to full power to maintain my distance closer to the Marker than the shore.  This seem like an eternity, but maybe 90 minutes.


The eye of David was approaching and an irre calm came over us.  There were around 20 boats up on shore near where we rode out the storm.  Some of them over 50’ long.   The back side of the storm was peaches and cream compared to the front side.

So we made it back to Ft. Lauderdale in good shape.  I have been in a lot of storms, but that was the worst one I have been in.  Fortunately, it weakened to a Category 2.

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