Sep-Oct 2022: Hurricane Ian - Early Pics (Only)

By now everyone knows about Hurricane Ian and its destructive path.  Here at our place in Southwest Florida – where the Caloosahatchee River flows into San Carlos Bay and the Gulf of Mexico – we got hammered.  We’ll write more about the experience and aftermath in due course, but for now we’re just sharing some photos.

This what the situation looked like on 22-Sep, six days before landfall.

The 22-Sep model plots....looked ominous

By 24-Sep most of the model plots had shifted well to our west....and we were not buying it.
We started putting up shutters and making arrangements to evacuate the boat & ourselves.

By 26-Sep the plots started moving back towards the east & us.

And we ended up in the worst eye wall winds & surge for hours.  At least we were inland in
a hotel by that time.

Here's a capture of the inReach track from our dock to RFYC

We hauled out the boat at RFYC in Labelle on Monday, 9/26

Ghost Rider got placed under a Cat-5 rated roof

Back at the house we then spooled the empty lift as high as we thought safe.

We put up house storm panels (shutters) all around & then got the hell out of there.

We should have relocated that standup paddle-peddle board.  Oh well.

Poolside prep view.

The storm hit as a high-end category 4 with 150 MPH winds and surge varying between 8 and 14 feet.  Our place is about 7.5 feet above sea level.  Fort Myers Beach (a few miles to our south) was flattened, as was Sanibel Island (a few miles to our southwest) and Pine Island (a couple miles closer.)  Our area experienced the southern eye wall for at least 7 hours.

The front of the house looked like it weathered the winds well.  We had retrofitted the roof with
hurricane hold down straps.

On the backside, however, not so much....there WAS a hot tub in this space

The pool was part seawater aquarium & part mangrove swamp

Water level at the back side of the house was obvious.

Water damage inside....

One street over from ours...floated off of someone's lift & plopped down here.

This is what's left of our neighbor's pool cage (one lot to our right.)

This is our neighbor's boat (across the street); it floated and/or blew off its lift and parked itself
on top of the dock.  They did get a crane truck back there to put it back in the water.

The start of our interior demolition.

We're just getting started (as of 7-October) on interior demolition steps, that and rebuild will take some time, but we'll get there.  We'll post more on such progress in the future.  As a parting shot, and a reminder of why informed folks "hide from the wind, but run from the water", here is a before and after aerial view of Legacy Harbor Marina, which not long ago was our home port just a few miles upriver:

Sep 2019: After Hurricane Dorian

Ghost Rider's Bottom Paint Getting a Much Needed Waterline Touch Up.

Rick didn’t visit RFYC and Ghost Rider again until Tuesday, 10-September, when he made the drive to check on work order progress and to coordinate logistics for splashing the boat once it was again ready for sea duty. 

The RFYC crew had been busy….they were about 80% complete with the bottom paint touch-up job, and had already torn into the two raw water intake seacocks for the main engine.  The one on the port side checked out OK – we visually verified the ball valve was moving to the closed position, plus they removed a hose end and poured water in to verify the ball valve wasn’t leaking.

Where the Starboard Side Seacock Used to Be.

The starboard side seacock definitely had a problem, though.  While we could visually verify the ball valve was moving to the closed position, when we performed the same leak check it was a veritable sieve.  Under pressure it would produce the scary flow that Rick had observed last time he tried to clean out its strainer basket.  Our guess was either there was upward play in the ball valve mechanism away from the sealing surface, or the Teflon sealing seat between the ball and housing was shot, or both – either way it would no longer serviceable.  The Groco replacement unit was due to arrive the following day.  (As it turned out, during bench testing of the removed seacock Rick discovered that the handle was traveling beyond the 90 degree closed position to a partially open condition - the mechanical stop had broken off the handle.)

Rick attacked a few new Wheelhouse maintenance items during this visit and also reconnected the boat’s WiFi system and camera network to the marina’s hotspot.  Along with the previously reconnected Monnit remote sensors, we now had our full remote monitoring solution back in service.

Two days later on Thursday, 12-September, after John (the yard manager) had called to verify they would be completing the work that day, Rick returned to RFYC and the boat.  This trip was to inspect the work on the bottom paint and the seacock, and to insure the boat was ready for splashing the next morning.  Everything looked good – the bottom paint touch up job was neat and thorough, and all seacock plumbing, hoses and clamps passed ready-for-sea inspection.

Bottom Side of the Removed Seacock.

Except for a few closed thru-hulls in the lazarette (mostly cooling circuits that tend to cavitate later if not closed off when on the hard) Rick also completed the engine room and laz preflight inspections.  That way we would be ready to startup soon after relaunching.  He also spent a little time wire brushing some barnacles off of some thru-hull trim rings and strainer slots; after that the bottom looked very good indeed.  The rest of the boat, however, was a dusty, grimy and bug-stained mess, so before leaving it for the day Rick gave Ghost Rider a quick hose down.

While we were hoping to splash the boat the following morning (Friday, 13-September), the weather forecast was changing quickly and not for the better.  The NHC was now calling for a tropical system of some sort to approach south Florida as the weekend neared, so we decided to leave Ghost Rider parked on the RFYC pad for the weekend.  Once again the models behind the NHC's cone of probability diverged significantly, with a wide gap between the GFS and Euro model path predictions.  The good news was that neither was calling for anything beyond tropical storm strength locally.  But with the likelihood of increasing TRW coverage along with windy conditions we decided to wait until this one passed.

By Saturday Tropical Storm Humberto Had Formed But Was Already Turning North & Staying Away From Florida.  A New  Disturbance Started to Spin in the Gulf but Was Moving Away Towards Texas.  We Would Need to Keep an Eye on the Other Three in the Middle of the Atlantic, but They Wouldn't Delay Our Plan to Splash Ghost Rider.

By Saturday morning, 14-September, NOAA's 5-day tropical outlook map was looking more like a game of tic-tac-toe with the number of potential hot spots it was tracking.  On Saturday night, caught between two low pressure systems, it rained like hell here. But as one (Hurricane Humberto) began to pull away to the north, and the other to the west towards Texas, they had sucked away most of moisture with them by late Sunday.

That made the weather forecast for Monday, 16-September pretty good for the slow slog down river back to Fort Myers.  So we dropped one car at Legacy Harbour and drove the other to RFYC.  We splashed Ghost Rider around 1030 and after leak-checking the new thru-hull seacock we were ready to take the boat back down river to Fort Myers.  The sortie down the big ditch was mostly uneventful -- both locks and the two low bridges were prompt in opening and we were the only traffic heading west on the Caloosahatchee this day.  We had good weather, with temps reaching the low 90's and just fair weather "popcorn" cumulus clouds.

Ghost Rider ran perfectly again -- right until we were attempting to dock at Legacy Harbour.  That's when the electronic throttle for the main engine failed.  Shit.

The Scarred Rub Rail on the Port Side Where Ghost Rider Crunched the Concrete Dock Piling After the Electronic
Throttle Failed in Forward Gear.  Use of the Bow Thruster Avoided a Direct Hit on the Anchor & Bow Pulpit, Which
Would Have Been Really Nasty.

And it failed (died...totally dead) while in forward gear, so Ghost Rider crunched the port side bow rub rail on a concrete piling before we got the main shut down and backed off using the wing engine.  We had a 15 knot crosswind for the stern-in docking maneuver, and that wasn't going to work with wing-only propulsion, so we backed down to a side tie near the entrance to the fairway.  

To say that Rick was torqued off would be the understatement of the decade.  More about troubleshooting and repairs in the next blog post.

A Close-up of the Rub Rail Scar.  There is Another Just Aft of This One.  And a Couple of FRP Scars Opposite
 on the Starboard Side.  This Won't Be a Cheap Repair.

Head-on View from A Distance at Our Temporary Slip....Ghost Rider Still Looks Good.  Up Close - Not So Much.

The Damage is Not Obvious Until One Gets Close.

Aug-Sep 2019: Hurricane Dorian

The Early Path Predictions for This Storm Covered a Huge Area.  Marinas &
Boat Owners Had to Make Decisions Early.

From August through October hurricanes are an annoying but normal part of life in Florida.  The damned things are inevitable, and with climate change accelerating at an alarming pace they are also getting more frequent and stronger.  And that’s why we always give ourselves a bailout option.  This year we knew we would be stuck in Florida for the tropical storm season, so we signed up for the hurricane club at the River Forest Yachting Center (RFYC) in Labelle, Fl.  That facility is 40 miles up-river from our Fort Myers (Legacy Harbour) mooring, with two locks (meaning no storm surge) between it and the open ocean, and with an expansive apron of concrete dotted with embedded tie-down anchors.  It was designed specifically to offer safe harbor from big blows.

Our Satellite Tracker Path from Fort Myers to River Forest Yachting Center
Near Labelle, Florida.

When the forecast for TD5 suddenly went from a dissipating tropical storm to a major hurricane named Dorian in the span of a couple of days, it definitely got our attention.  And when the Euro model’s forecast track had it going from Palm Beach on the east coast and straight over Fort Myers on the west coast of the state at formidable strength, we decided to move the boat to RFYC.  We had been intending to take the boat there for some maintenance attention anyway, and this was a compelling trigger.

A Nordhavn 55, Fusion, Heading in the Opposite Direction....for Good Reason.

Thus on Friday, 30-Aug, we were up at 0600 and underway just before the 0700 sunrise, chugging eastward up the Caloosahatchee River at a steady 7.8 knots.  In spite of the two locks (Franklin & Ortona) and a few bridge openings to negotiate, we covered the 40 NM in just five and a half hours, arriving at RFYC by 1230.  Surprisingly there was only sparse boat traffic along the way, one of which was a westbound Nordhavn 55, Fusion, who via VHF told us “no way we were staying in Palm Beach” and were headed to Twin Dolphins Marina on the Manatee River in Bradenton.

We did not have to loiter for any openings; both locks had their western gates open when we arrived, and the two bridge tenders were prompt and courteous.  At the Alva bascule bridge the attendant inquired via VHF: “Aren’t you guys headed in the wrong direction?”  We mentioned our RFYC destination and haul-out intentions and he congratulated us on a good plan.  

Waiting on the Fort Denaud Swing Bridge & Hoping it Wouldn't Get
Stuck in an Intermediate Position.

The only real angst we had was at the Fort Denaud swing bridge (9 foot clearance); that thing is ancient and rickety, and has been known to fail in the closed or partially open position….but not this time.  Even the weather cooperated, with the usual thunderstorms holding off until much later that afternoon.  And Ghost Rider ran perfectly; we even managed to squeeze in a short wide open throttle (WOT) run as we hustled to make the final lock opening at Ortona.

We didn’t even have to wait for the haul-out upon arrival at RFYC….we were directed straight into the well, got Ghost Rider all strapped in, and we were out of the water in short order.  We shut down everything – all AC and DC circuit breakers, plus the inverter.  Except for the battery monitor and a few electrical panel LEDs, Ghost Rider was electrically dead.  There would be no shore power connection, so that was necessary to preserve the house battery bank.

Ghost Rider Hauling Out at River Forest Yachting Center.

It took us about three hours to get the boat prepped after the travel lift had positioned us on their tie-down apron.  We had been through this preparation routine once before with Hurricane Irma in 2017, so we had a good checklist to follow.  We stripped canvas, lowered antennae, stowed loose items, and tied or taped anything that might move or leak.  In the 90+ degree heat it was an exhausting afternoon.  The RFYC staff placed plenty of blocks and jackstands to support the boat’s 80,000 pounds, then ratchet strapped 4 of our beefy corner cleats to their equally beefy concrete-embedded hurricane eye bolts.  We were storm ready if needed.

While there Rick sat down with John, the yard manager, and we wrote up a work order to replace or repair the two faulty seacock through-hulls we had discovered back in the spring.  We also added some remedial bottom paint work to the order – upon haul out we noticed excessive ablative wear all along the water line and some on the bulbous bow.  Below that, however, the bottom paint was in excellent shape. 

The Bottom Paint Along the Waterline was Looking Pretty Sad, Although
Below That It Still Looked Very Good.

By 1600 we called it a day.  RFYC is in the middle of nowhere, with no good transportation options available locally.  Fortunately we had dropped one of the cars at RFYC the day before (by automobile it’s only an hour’s drive from Legacy Harbour) so we weren’t stranded.  Coincidentally we had met another Nordhavn couple the day before, George and Christina, who were transient berthed at Legacy; they also took their N35, Sophie, to River Forest, so we gave them (and their cat) a lift back to Fort Myers to retrieve their rental car.

We slept like corpses that night and then spent the next few days relaxing at our Fort Myers condo while tracking Dorian’s progress (or lack of it) across western Atlantic waters.  By the time it reached the hot-tub-temperatures of Bahamian waters (Sunday, 01-Sep) it had spooled up to a Cat-5 storm with sustained winds at 185 MPH and gusts to 220, pushing a surge around 20 feet.  The Abacos and Grand Bahama – places like Hopetown, Marsh Harbor, Green Turtle Cay, West End, that we had so enjoyed during last year’s cruising – got absolutely walloped by the storm as it plowed westward, stalled, and spun a sustained and devastating attack on those small islands.

Ghost Rider at RFYC After Being Relocated to a Covered Spot on the Apron.

Dorian had slowed so dramatically that it wasn’t until Wednesday, 04-Sep that RFYC was able to start unstrapping and splashing boats.  Chelle went shopping for groceries and supplies to drop off for our area’s Bahamian relief efforts, and Rick drove back to RFYC to visit Ghost Rider and to get an estimate of how long our repair work order would take.  The boat was pretty dirty but otherwise in good shape.  Rick began reversing some of the storm preps, ventilated the engine room and got shore power hooked up (to re-charge the house batteries) after the RFYC staff relocated Ghost Rider to a work slot on the apron that was also under cover.  

Rick made one more trip back to RFYC and the boat on Friday, 06-September, to complete reversal of our storm preps and to take care of some interim maintenance to-do's that our Wheelhouse program was nagging about.  The RFYC staff indicated they intended to start on our work order the following Monday, so for now we were done with boat business.

In the interim Chelle had kept extremely busy with the storm relief efforts for the northernmost islands in the Bahamas.  In addition to her shopping trip we posted signs in our condo complex and collected more non-perishables from our neighbors.  One of our local Fort Myers boat yards, Stokes Marine (LINK), was a nearby and convenient site coordinating supplies and transport.  (Owner, Brent Stokes, was interviewed by CNN, a clip is available at the THIS LINK.)  While Rick was distracted with Ghost Rider Chelle spent more of her time helping load up trucks and boats. Their initial flotilla and private plane formation delivered a significant payload to Lucaya, Grand Bahama, today -- it's the only port capable of receiving materials at this point.  But the hope is to keep it going and include the Abacos sometime next week.

Overall they’ve done a fabulous job collecting and transporting a huge amount of critically needed supplies....pics below. Fortunately the weather was cooperating, as Dorian had sucked all the moisture out of our atmosphere like a gigantic wet-dry vacuum on its journey north.  If you want to help and are not sure how, there is a safe GoFundMe site at this LINK.  Or just head over to the Red Cross web site HERE.

Just Some of the Relief Supplies Being Collected at Stokes Marine.

Loading Up the Boats.  Some Would Sortie Across Lake O, but Many Were Trailered Over to
Fort Lauderdale and From There Headed to Lucaya, Grand Bahama.