Hurricanes I've known

For the last 23 years a Kiwi sailor has been working on boats in the Caribbean, Bahamas and Florida area – and during that time he’s survived quite a few hurricanes.

Back in the early 1990s I was in Marsh Harbour, Abaco Island, in the Bahamas and had just finished a charter season. It was late August and high time to be out of the area as the peak of the hurricane season is around September 15.

But a hurricane developed just to the south of the Bahamas. It was too late to flee and a friend offered the use of his mooring buoy. Unsure about the condition of the underwater chain, though, I elected to use an anchor as well. I now had the anchor out to port and the line running to the mooring from the starboard bow cleat.

A few hours before the hurricane arrived a 40-foot (12.2m) Hunter came in and anchored off my port bow. The SE wind began to rise and steadily increased all afternoon and into the night. By midnight I guess it was blowing around 70 knots and the waves were breaking over the bow, even though I was in the lee of the land about 300 metres away.

Ahead of me was a large trawler type private yacht with a very high bow. At 2am I heard a foghorn and leapt up: the trawler was dragging down towards me. I started the engine in the hope of dodging the unwieldy craft as it lumbered downwind – its engine screaming and someone on the foredeck trying to raise the anchor. They got to within 30 metres of my bow before raising the anchor and then crabbed over to re-anchor near the lee shore.

Meanwhile the Hunter was doing an evil dance. My boat was veering through 70° as the wind threw it around. The Hunter was

doing a full 180°. It would tear off in one direction across the wind, come to violent stop at the end of the chain, twist around and fly off in the opposite direction, at right angles to the wind. I felt sorry for the occupants.

By morning the storm had passed and I went over to the Hunter. They looked knackered – no sleep and the mad gyrations of the boat had pretty well cured them of sailing! They were lucky the chain didn’t break.

FLOYD

In 1999 Hurricane Floyd looked as if it would come though the Bahamas to strike southern Florida. I was running a 55-foot (16.8m) Viking in the Bahamas and decided to run for Waterways Marina in north Miami to take shelter.

When I arrived a mandatory evacuation was in effect for all those living east of the Intracoastal and Miami was boarding itself up in anticipation of a major event. Some 2.6 million people were evacuated along the coast and when Floyd was finished it was estimated to have caused US$9 billion worth of damage!

WILMA

Not long after arriving in Fort Lauderdale in 2005 a new hurricane came stomping through the Caribbean doing all sorts of damage. I found a dock in front of a private house in a narrow canal off the north fork of the New River. Hurricane Wilma was a category five storm and the most intense hurricane ever recorded at that point.

She smashed the Yucatan Peninsula to a pulp before making a bee line for Florida and Fort Lauderdale.

The dock was fairly decrepit so I bought two large galvanized cleats and, with the owner’s permission, mounted them on the concrete sea wall. As the storm approached I ran two 20mm nylon lines from the bow and stern to the opposite side of the canal and pulled the boat about 1.2m off the old wooden dock. Everyone else was doing much the same and after a while the canal looked like a giant spider’s web.

The wind came in from the port quarter early and by 10am it was gusting over 87 knots. Once the wind reaches around 70 knots it’s hard to walk on the deck without clinging to something. Over 80 – you have to crawl. The airport recorded gusts at 104 knots. My boat had in-mast furling on the main and mizzen, and when broadside to the wind the masts’ slits sound like giant flutes – terrifying!

The boat was heeling well to starboard in the heavy gusts. I had the generator running and the TV on watching the weather channel for updates. People ashore weren’t so lucky. The power failed, the water system broke down and bits of trees and roofs were flying through the air.

This sail was furled on the forestay. With a cannon-like explosion the sail came loose and in less than a minute it was reduced to shreds. The noise was unbelievable. Wilma caused an estimated US$25 billion in damage. I walked up to the house to see how the owner of my borrowed dock had faired. The family was unharmed but without power, so I offered to run my generator and bring a cable from the boat to keep their fridge and a couple of lights going. They were very grateful. I started to tell them of my adventure with the bow line when the man stopped me: “We saw everything. It was better than TV.”

IRENE

In August 2011 I was in the Bahamas chartering a boat. I and a friend, Simon Crowley, booking a place among the mangroves at Green Turtle Cay for our boats, a 53-foot (16.3m) Gulfstar and my Morgan 512.

As the storm moved north we made ourselves secure in the mangroves. We had around 30 lines out – the boats parallel and about 30 metres apart. I’d borrowed about 25m of 25mm, multiple strand line and it became a real boat saver.

At about 8am the wind started to freshen and was soon gusting to 40-plus knots – on the starboard beam. Once again my boat started to heel. About 11am a line running from the starboard stern cleat to a nearby mangrove snapped and I decided to renew it using the dinghy. The wind was now up around 50 knots and by pulling myself along one of the other lines I managed to attach the new line to a mangrove root.

This was exhausting and for a while I sat in the cockpit getting my breath back. But then I realised this wasn’t the safest place to be. Some 40 metres upwind of the boat was a dock with a small corrugated iron shed. It was being wrenched apart violently and I could foresee a piece of iron whirling through the air and decapitating the idiot sitting in the cockpit. I went below and brewed some coffee.

Meanwhile the wind speed kept rising. Soon over 70, then 80. A sail boat on a mooring about 100 metres downwind was carrying a furled genoa. This suddenly unwound and with a clap like thunder the sail was ripped to shreds. A small yacht off my port bow broke loose and swung round into the mangroves. And still the wind increased. We were later told gusts of 122 knots had been recorded.

About midday we entered the eye and the wind dropped to nothing – blue sky overhead. Simon and I jumped to secure the small boat that would threaten us when the wind turned. I was also