NEWS: Irma sinks Bay pair’s dreams
Pair trapped on Caribbean island after monster storm sinks yacht
LEFT with nothing but a borrowed pair of shorts, a T-shirt and a phone, a Port Elizabeth woman and her husband are now trapped on a Caribbean island after narrowly escaping Hurricane Irma at her worst.
The boat on which Cherie Wood, 46, and her husband Jonathan, 48, were living was moored off St Martin, an island in the northeast Caribbean Sea with a population of roughly 77 000, when the area took a direct hit five days ago.
Yesterday, Cherie’s sister Mary-Anne Thompson, 42, who now lives in Australia, said had the couple stayed aboard the yacht – their original plan – they would be dead.
During its passage through the Caribbean, Irma was ranked at the top end of the scale of hurricane intensity, a Category 5, for days.
It carried maximum sustained winds of up to 295km/h when it crashed into the Leeward Islands made up of Barbuda, St Martin and Anguilla.
The couple had sailed the uninsured yacht from Cape Town to Brazil and finally St Martin, where they had been cleaning other boats to make a living.
The Woods, whose yacht was among dozens that sank, had fortunately gone ashore where a stranger invited them to stay in his flat.
The roof was ripped off the apartment building and the couple forced to hunker down in the bathroom with their host.
In a series of messages from Cherie to her sisters, the devastation of Hurricane Irma, which killed eight people on St Martin, is evident.
In one Cherie wrote on Friday, she said: “We survived the first hurricane but have another one coming tomorrow.
“The island is a complete disaster zone and they are shutting it down for about a year.
“We sat in the toilet area which was the only place left with a roof and walls. “We have lost everything, the boat is upside down and sank so all our belongings are lost.
“There is no food or water, but we are at a friend’s house so are all ok for now.”
She said the island looked like Armageddon.
The second hurricane referred to was Jose, which hit on Saturday. The islands were spared a direct blow.
Cherie’s father, Gilbert Lawler, 70, who lives in Port Elizabeth, said all he wanted was his daughter – who went to Victoria Park High School and grew up in Lorraine – home.
Yesterday, reports indicated a crime wave on the island had everyone on edge, with shop owners forced to chase looters away with machetes.
But without money, passports or even clothes, Thompson believes escaping the lawless island will be a difficult task for her sister so she has set up a Go Fund Me page called Hurricane Irma Relief For My Family.
In tears on the phone from Mandurah in Western Australia yesterday, she said: “It’s really bad. I don’t know how to get them out.
“They didn’t insure the boat and it [Irma] has taken their whole life.
“They can’t access anything, there is nothing on the island and they have lost their passports and all their documentation.
“I hope people can help them.”