THE ISLAND RIDING IT OUT
Sailors spend rocky night in Summerside’s marina amid Dorian.
SUMMERSIDE — It was a rocky, but safe Saturday night for a U.S. couple that decided to ride out hurricane Dorian on their vessel docked in Summerside’s marina.
While many on land woke up to power outages, toppled trees and a trail of debris Sunday morning, Curt Hermann and Sue Nakazawa sipped coffee in the warm comfort of their ves- sel.
“Over the night we felt safe because we were enclosed in the small marina and right near the Canadian Coast Guard vessel. I even joked with the Coast Guards and said, ‘All you need to do is walk 10 metres to save us,” said Hermann.
Nakazawa said it was mostly a noisy and rocky night in the boat, but a power outage caused the most inconvenience with the loss of heat.
Hermann and Nakazawa originally planned to continue to Halifax and then onto the Bahamas, but hurricane Dorian altered their path.
“We sailed from Chicago to P.E.I. and have been here for one-week, touring, but plan to sail down to the Caribbean on Monday afternoon if it’s safe, and then divert to the Islands least affected by the weather,” said Hermann.
Nakazawa acknowledged Summerside Yacht Club and Marina staff were “wonderful and really helpful” over the night while keeping a lookout on all those weathering the storm. Hurricane Dorian hit Nova Scotia as a category 1 storm, but as it slammed Summerside early Sunday morning it became a post-tropical storm.
Hermann and Nakazawa were not the only ones to take refuge in their vessel.
Skipper Paul Bingham and his crew member hurriedly secured their sailboat early Saturday morning before the downpour of rain and high winds.
“We sailed from Toronto to P.E.I. for a wedding and initially planned to spend three days here before sailing to Nova Scotia, and then continuing south to New Zealand,” said Bingham.
“... Summerside’s marina is protected well. It’s probably one of the best ones in the Maritimes, so we – myself and another crew member – decided to stay here as our hurricane home.
“... I have never weathered a hurricane before. I’m from Wellington, in New Zealand, which is the windiest city in the world, but this will be a new experience,” said Bingham before the storm hit.
“She’s a big solid cruising boat, designed to weather storms. The problem, however, with the marina is surging of water. You can bump against things and other boats, parts of the marina can break off into flying debris, so marinas can be very dangerous – and out on the open water is sometimes safer."
Bingham’s vessel was suspended like a giant spider’s web between secured lines of Hermann and Nakazawa.